Alexander Hamilton, a man tagged in modern times with authoritarian inclinations, left no doubt what the sovereign people were to do in the face of ongoing oppression. The great vehicle of oppression to enforce tyranny in the 17th and 18th centuries was a king’s standing army. For centuries after the Norman Conquest, the prerogative of English kings to raise armies was nearly unlimited. This ages-old right, of which Spanish and French kings shared, did not end in England until the close of the Glorious Revolution in 1688. Subsequent to a 1689 Bill of Rights, English kings needed the consent of...