VIII. COMMONWEALTH, A.D.1653. is true, would feel none of these embarrassments; CHAPTER they were in no danger of charging the follies of the government upon the bible. But the young are not experienced; nor can they be, in this sense, wise. Can we be surprised if, thus trained, they lived to ridicule seriousness, to deny a providence, to regard religion as a fable, and to question the very being of a God? An age of great religious profession was succeeded by an age of great impiety. The fact cannot be denied: it is never likely to be forgotten. For the men who detest religion as the barrier to their vices, or the exponent of their shame, ring it in our ears incessantly. Whether this shameful declension were, however, the consequence of pure and spiritual religion, or of the want of it, the reader is now in a condition to decide. IX. CHAPTER IX. A.D. 1653-1658. CHAPTER HISTORIANS have written the life of Cromwell rather than the history of his protectorate. His TORATE, personal character has been more interesting than A.D. 1653. the record of his actions; although his actions were PROTEC in a peculiar sense his own. Assistance embarrassed him; his counsellors lent him neither weight nor wisdom. The less he was incumbered the more steady was his course and the loftier his flight. The only assistance which he valued was that of his council of officers; and he valued them only so long as they submitted to his dictation. Resistance was always punished, under one pretext or another, with his high displeasure; and long before the protector's death most of his early friends had been disgraced. Harrison had been arrested; Ludlow was banished to his house in the country. Colonel Lilburn had been a prisoner in Newgate for several years. Desborough, who had married his sister, and Fleetwood, his son-in-law, were treated with suspicion, and compelled to stand aloof. Ireton, another son-in-law, was dead, but he too had outlived the protector's confidence. As the civilians fell beneath his dislike they were treated with contemptuous IX. PROTEC TORATE, A.D. 1653. neglect. The mind that conceived, executed. He CHAPTER would not submit to that intermediate process by means of which our own thoughts return to us amended and improved by the toil of other men. If he listened to advice, it was to shew his condescension; if he seemed to solicit the opinions of his friends, it was that he might arrive at their secrets and know how far to calculate on their assistance. There is only one instance in his life in which he is known to have been diverted from his purpose in deference to the judgment of his advisers. He reluctantly declined the crown when his generals were displeased; submitting however, even then, rather to force than argument; for he clearly perceived that in this instance the whole army would have sided against their general, and drawn their swords again for liberty and a new republic. His first act after the dissolution of the rump receives its explanation from this view of his character. In his own name and by his sole authority, on the 6th of June 1653, he convoked, or rather impressed, a parliament. It contained a few gentlemen of fortune and education; but the majority were vulgar, ignorant, and utterly incompetent. Of these, one hundred and twenty obeyed the summons; the famous Barebones, a prating fanatic whose celebrity is owing entirely to his impudence, amongst the rest. Cromwell addressed them in Whitehall; he told them that they had a clear call to undertake the government; "he encouraged them with divers scriptures," not perhaps so much from an affectation of piety as because the scrip TORATE, A.D. 1653. CHAPTER tures were in fact almost his only literature; and IX. he delivered to them an instrument of government PROTEC- confiding the nation to their care, and limiting their existence to the month of November in the following year, when they were to nominate their successors and abdicate their functions. That such an assembly should succeed was impossible ;that Cromwell wished it to succeed is most unlikely. It is more probable that he hoped by this manœuvre at once to indulge the fanatics, and, as a political party, to destroy them; a cunning device and perfectly successful, though unworthy of a statesman or a man of virtue. On the 5th of July they met and fasted; on the 11th they chose a speaker, and set apart a day for prayer; and on the 13th they passed a declaration " calling upon the godly to seek God for a blessing upon the nation." But they who expect that prayer and fasting will fit them to discharge the obligations which folly has imposed, are grievously deceived. When they proceeded to business they were a laughing-stock; and happily their incapacity was soon apparent even to themselves. In a few weeks they hurried back to Whitehall and resigned their powers to Cromwell without even naming their successors. The name of a parliament was now odious, and government itself contemptible. Disgusted alike with every change, the nation acquiesced in the power of one strong hand. Thus the disgrace of his convention was a substantial addition to Cromwell's power. Their impotence contrasted with his vigour, and their failure with his own wonderful success. While every subject to which they applied themselves IX. TORATE, seemed too great for them, the executive govern- CHAPTER ment beneath his vigorous management rose every day in public estimation. While the parliament PROTECcould devise, for example, no other remedy for the evils and delays of the law than the ridiculous measure of suppressing the court of chancery itself, the lord general was diffusing everywhere the blessings of cheap justice by choosing able judges and upright magistrates. The return to order, after a long period of distraction, went on rapidly. The army was successful in Ireland, and against the Scotch who still remained in arms; and, above all, the vanity of England was inflamed by a series of brilliant victories at sea over the Spaniards and the Dutch. No successes were ever more opportune. The fears of the people had been thoroughly aroused. The Dutch fleet had thrown their cannon balls into the streets of Dover; and the roaring of their guns, in an engagement at the Nore, had actually been heard in London. Within a few weeks their fleet was dispersed or taken, and their brave admiral Van Tromp was slain. The city was in a transport of delight; and the impression was deepened by the circumstance of the death of Dean, the English admiral who fell in the action. His body was carried from Greenwich to Westminster by the Thames with funeral honours not at all inferior to those which were paid to Nelson by our fathers; and he was buried in Westminster abbey with the utmost splendour, Cromwell himself attending as chief mourner. War was still the passion of the age, and the nation began to admire Cromwell as a deliverer and almost as a patriot, now that he |