In the Thirteen British Colonies of America, there was a strong distrust of a standing army that was not under civilian control. [29] [30] The U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8) limits federal funding to two years and reserves financial control to Congress rather than the president. The 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia provided checks for each standing army, allowing the president to command it, but Congress funded it through short-term legislation. Triggered by the fear of standing armies, to which Story alluded, the authors inserted the restriction that “no use of money for this use may last more than two years.” In 1904, the question arose as to whether this provision would be violated if the government paid a royalty for the use of a patent in the construction of weapons and other equipment for which payments were to last more than two years. Attorney General Hoyt ruled that such a contract would be legal; that the resources limited by the Constitution “are only those intended to establish and sustain armies in the strict sense of the word `assistance`, and that the suspension of this clause does not extend to the means for the various means which an army may use in military operations or which are deemed necessary for the common defence”. 1639 Citing this earlier notice, Attorney General Clark ruled in 1948 that there was “no legal objection to a request to Congress to provide funds to the Air Force for the purchase of aircraft and aeronautical equipment until they are exhausted.” 1640 Philip II of Macedon founded the first truly professional Greek army, with soldiers and horsemen paid for their service throughout the year, rather than a militia of men who farmed the land mainly for subsistence and were sometimes rounded up for campaigns. [8] The Militia Act of 1661 prohibited local authorities from assembling militias without the king`s consent in order to prevent such force from being used to suppress local opponents. This weakened the incentive of local officials to assemble their own fighting troops, and King Charles II subsequently assembled four regiments of infantry and cavalry and called them his guards, at a cost of £122,000, paid from his regular budget. It became the base of the standing British Army. In 1685, it had 7,500 soldiers in the marching regiments and 1,400 men permanently stationed in the garrisons.
The Monmouth Rebellion in 1685 provided James II with a pretext to increase the force to 20,000 men, and by 1688 it was 37,000 when England played a role in the final stages of the Franco-Dutch War. In 1689, William III increased the army to 74,000 men and in 1694 to 94,000 men. States are less likely to impose adequate political protection measures on their militias than the Union provides adequate political protection measures for the national army. In West Africa, the Songhai Empire under Askia Mohammad I (1493-1528) had a full-time warrior corps. Al-Sa`di, the chronicler who wrote Tarikh al-Sudan, compared the army of Askia Mohammad I. with that of his predecessor; “He distinguished between civilians and army, unlike the Sunni Ali [1464-92], when everyone was a soldier. It is said that Askia Mohammad I had a cynical attitude towards kingdoms without professional armies like his, especially compared to the neighboring kingdoms of the country of Borgu. [24] In ancient Greece, the armies of the city-states (poleis) were essentially citizen militias. [8] The exception was in ancient Sparta, which had a standing army that trained year-round (not just summer).