the public good, that the people complained of the disappointments which they had experienced, and the fallacious promises by which they had been gulled, that they were the dupes of a few overbearing individuals, you put an end to their domination. A new parliament is summoned and the right of election given to those to whom it was expedient. They meet, but do nothing; and, after having wearied themselves by their mutual dissensions, and fully exposed their incapacity to the observation of the country, they consent to a voluntary dissolution. In this state of desolation to which we were reduced, you, O Cromwell! alone remained to conduct the government, and to save the country. We all willingly yield the palm of sovereignty to your unrivalled ability and virtue, except the few among us, who, either ambitious of honours which they have not the capacity to sustain, or who envy those which are conferred on one more worthy than themselves, or else who do not know that nothing in the world is more pleasing to God, more agreeable to reason, more politically just, or more generally useful, than that the supreme power should be vested in the best and the wisest of men. Such, O Cromwell! all acknowledge you to be; such are the services which you have rendered, as the leader of our councils, the general of our armies, and the father of your country. For this is the tender appellation by which all the good among us salute you from the very soul. Other names you neither have nor could endure; and you deservedly reject that pomp of title which attracts the gaze and admiration of the multitude. For what is a title but a certain definite mode of dignity? But actions such as yours surpass, not only the bounds of our admiration, but our titles; and like the points of pyramids, which are lost in the clouds, they soar above the possibilities of titular commendation. But since, though it be not fit, it may be expedient, that the highest pitch of virtue should be circumscribed within the bounds of some human appellation, you endured to receive, for the public good, a title most like to that of the father of your country; not to exalt, but rather to bring you nearer to the level of ordinary men; the title of king was unworthy the transcendent majesty of your character. For if you had been captivated by a name over which, as a private man, you had so completely triumphed and crumbled into dust, you would have been doing the same thing as if, after having subdued some idolatrous nation by the help of the true God, you should afterwards fall down and worship the gods which you had vanquished. Do you, then, sir, continue your course with the same unrivalled magnanimity. It sits well upon you. To you our country owes its liberties, nor can you sustain a character at once more momentous and more august than that of the author, the guardian, and the preserver of our liberties; and hence you have not only eclipsed the achievements of all our kings, but even those which have been fabled of our heroes. Often reflect what a dear pledge the beloved land of your nativity has entrusted to your care; and that liberty which she once expected only from the chosen flower of her talents and her virtues, she now expects from you only, and by you only hopes to obtain. Revere the fond expectations which we cherish, the solicitudes of your anxious country. Revere the looks and the wounds of your brave companions in arms, who, under your banners, have so strenuously fought for liberty; revere the shades of those who perished in the contest, Revere also the opinions and the hopes which foreign states entertain concerning us, who promise to themselves so many advantages from that liberty which we have so bravely acquired, from the establishment of that new government which has begun to shed its splendour on the world, which, if it be suffered to vanish like a dream, would involve us in the deepest abyss of shame. And, lastly, revere yourself; and, after having endured so many sufferings and encountered so many perils for the sake of liberty, do not suffer it, now it is obtained, either to be violated by yourself, or in any one instance impaired by others,

You cannot be truly free unless we are free too; for such is the nature of things, that he who intrenches on the liberty of others is the first to lose his own and become a slave. But if you, who have hitherto been the patron and tutelary genius of liberty, if you, who are exceeded by no one in justice, in piety, and goodness, should hereafter invade that liberty which you have defended, your conduct must be fatally operative, not only against the cause of liberty, but the general interests of piety and virtue. Your integrity and virtue will appear to have evaporated, your faith in religion to have been small; your character with posterity will dwindle into insignificance, by which a most destructive blow will be levelled against the happiness of mankind. The work which you have undertaken is of incalculable moment, which will thoroughly sift and expose every principle and sensation of your heart, which will fully display the vigour and genius of your character, which will evince whether you really possess those great qualities of piety, fidelity, justice, and self-denial, which made us believe that you were elevated by the special direction of the Deity to the highest pinnacle of power. At once wisely and discreetly to hold the sceptre over three powerful nations, to persuade people to relinquish inveterate and corrupt for new and more beneficial maxims and institutions, to penetrate into the remotest parts of the country, to have the mind present and operative in every quarter, to watch against surprise, to provide against danger, to reject the blandishments of pleasure and the pomp of power-these are exertions compared with which the labour of war is mere pastime; which will require every energy and employ every faculty that you possess; which demand a man supported from above, and almost instructed by immediate inspiration. These and more than these are, no doubt, the objects which occupy your attention and engross your soul; as well as the means by which you may accomplish these important ends, and render our liberty at once ample and more secure. And this you can, in my opinion, in no other way so readily effect, as by associating in your councils the companions of your dangers and your toils-men of exemplary modesty, integrity, and courage, whose hearts have not been hardened in cruelty and rendered insensible to pity by the sight of so much ravage and so much death, but whom it has rather inspired with the love of justice, with a respect for religion, and with the feeling of compassion, and who are more zealously interested in the preservation of liberty, in proportion as they have encountered more perils in its defence. They are not strangers or foreigners, a hireling rout scraped together from the dregs of the people, but, for the most part, men of the better conditions in life, of families not disgraced if not ennobled, of fortunes either ample or moderate; and what if some among them are recommended by their poverty? for it was not the lust of ravage which brought them into the field; it was the calamitous aspect of the times, which in the most critical circumstances, and often amid the most disastrous turns of fortune, roused them to attempt the deliverance of their country from the fangs of despotism. They were men prepared, not only to debate, but to fight; not only to argue in the senate, but to engage the enemy in the field. But, unless we will continually cherish indefinite and illusory expectations, I see not in whom we can place any confidence, if not in these men and such as these. We have the surest and most indubitable pledge of their fidelity in this, that they have already exposed themselves to death in the service of their country; of their piety in this, that they have been always wont to ascribe the whole glory of their successes to the favour of the Deity, whose help they have so suppliantly implored, and so conspicuously obtained; of their justice in this, that they even brought the king to trial, and when his guilt was proved, refused to save his life; of their moderation in our own uniform experience of its effects, and because, if by any outrage they should disturb the peace which they have procured, they themselves will be the first to feel the

miseries which it will occasion, the first to meet the havoc of the sword, and the first again to risk their lives for all those comforts and distinctions which they have so happily acquired: and lastly, of their fortitude in this, that there is no instance of any people who ever recovered their liberty with so much courage and success; and therefore let us not suppose that there can be any persons who will be more zealous in preserving it.

CROMWELL AND NAPOLEON COMPARED.

H. HALLAM.

*

He left a fame behind him proportioned to his extraordinary fortunes and to the great qualities which sustained them; still more perhaps the admiration of strangers than of his country, because that sentiment was less alloyed by hatred, which seeks to extenuate the glory that irritates it. The nation itself forgave much to one who had brought back the renown of her ancient story, the traditions of Elizabeth's age, after the ignominious reigns of her successors. This contrast with James and Charles in their foreign policy gave additional lustre to the era of the protectorate. There could not but be a sense of national pride to see an Englishman, but yesterday raised above the many, without one drop of blood in his veins which the princes of the earth could challenge as their own, receive the homage of those who acknowledged no right to power, and hardly any title to respect, except that of prescription. The sluggish pride of Spain, the mean-spirited cunning of Mazarin, the irregular imagination of Christina, sought with emulous ardour the friendship of our usurper. He had the advantage of reaping the harvest which he had not sown, by an honourable treaty with Holland, the fruit of victories achieved under the parliament. But he still employed the great energies of Blake in the service for which he was so eminently fitted; and it is just to say that the maritime glory of England may first be traced from the era of the commonwealth in a track of continuous light. The oppressed protestants in catholic kingdoms, disgusted at the lukewarmness and halfapostacy of the Stuarts, looked up to him as their patron and mediator.+ Courted by the two rival monarchies of Europe, he seemed to threaten both with his hostility; and when he declared against Spain, and attacked her West India possessions, with little pretence certainly of justice, but not by any means, as I conceive, with the impolicy sometimes charged against him, so auspicious was his star that the very failure and disappointment of that expedition obtained a more advantageous position for England than all the triumphs of her former kings.

*Harris, p. 348, has collected some curious instances of the servility of crowned heads to Oliver Cromwell.

† See Clarendon, vii., 297. He saved Nismes from military execution on account of a riot, wherein the Huguenots seem to have been much to blame. In the treaty between England and France, 1654, the French, in agreeing to the secret article about the exclusion of the royalists, endeavoured to make it reciprocal, that the commissioners of rebels in France should not be admitted in England. This did not seem very outrageous-but Cromwell objected that the French protestants would be thus excluded from imploring the assistance of England, if they were persecuted; protesting however that he was very far from having any thought to draw them from their obedience, as had been imputed to him, and that he would arm against them, if they should offer frivolously and without a cause to disturb the peace of France. Thurloe III., 6. In fact, the French protestants were in the habit of writing to Thurloe, as this collection testifies, whenever they thought themselves injured, which happened frequently enough. Cromwell's noble zeal in behalf of the Vaudois is well known. See this volume of Thurloe, p. 412, &c. Mazarin and the catholic powers in general endeavoured to lie down that massacre; but the usurper had too much protestant spirit to believe them. Id. 536.

Notwithstanding this external splendour, which has deceived some of our own, and most foreign writers, it is evident that the submission of the people to Cromwell was far from peaceable or voluntary. His strong and skilful grasp kept down a nation of enemies that must naturally, to judge from their numbers and inveteracy, have overwhelmed him. It required a dexterous management to play with the army, and without the army he could not have existed as sovereign for a day. Yet it seems highly improbable that, had Cromwell lived, any insurrection or conspiracy, setting aside assassination, could have overthrown a possession so fenced by systematic vigilance, by experienced caution, by the respect and terror that belonged to his name. The royalist and republican intrigues had gone on for several years without intermission; but every part of their designs was open to him; and it appears that there was not courage or rather temerity sufficient to make any open demonstration of so prevalent a disaffection.*

The most superficial observers cannot have overlooked the general resemblances in the fortunes and character of Cromwell, and of him who, more recently and upon an ampler theatre, has struck nations with wonder and awe. But the parallel may be traced more closely than perhaps has hitherto been remarked. Both raised to power by the only merit which a revolution leaves uncontroverted and untarnished, that of military achievements, in that reflux of public sentiment, when the fervid enthusiasm of democracy gives place to disgust at its excesses and a desire of firm government. The means of greatness the same to both; the extinction of a representative assembly, once national, but already mutilated by violence, and sunk by its submission to that illegal force into general contempt. In military science or the renown of their exploits, we cannot certainly rank Cromwell by the side of him for whose genius and ambition all Europe seemed the appointed quarry; but it may be said that the former's exploits were as much above the level of his contemporaries, and more the fruits of an original uneducated capacity. In civil government, there can be no adequate parallel between one who had sucked only the dregs of a besotted fanaticism, and one to whom the stores of reason and philosophy were open. But it must here be added that Cromwell, far unlike his antitype, never showed any signs of a legislative mind, or any desire to fix his renown on that noblest basis, the amelioration of social institutions. Both were eminent masters of human nature, and played with inferior capacities in all the security of powerful minds. Though both, coming at the conclusion of a struggle for liberty, trampled upon her claims, and sometimes spoke disdainfully of her name, each knew how to associate the interests of those who had contended for her with his own ascendancy, and made himself the representative of a victorious revolution. Those who had too much philosophy or zeal for freedom to give way to popular admiration for these illustrious usurpers, were yet amused with the adulation that lawful princes showered on them, more gratuitously in one instance, with servile terror in the other. Both too repaid in some measure this homage of the pretended great by turning their ambition towards those honours and titles which they knew to be so little connected with high desert. A fallen race of monarchs, which had made way for the greatness of each, cherished hopes of restoration by their power till each, by an inexpiable act of blood, manifested his determination to make no compromise with that line. Both possessed a certain coarse good nature and affability that covered the want of conscience, honour, and humanity; quick in passion, but not vindictive, and averse to unnecessary crimes. Their fortunes in the conclusion of life were indeed very different one forfeited the affections of his people, which the other, in the character at least of their master, had never possessed; one furnished a moral to Europe by the continuance of his success, the other by the prodigiousness of his fall. A fresh Ludlow, 607; Thurloe, i. and ii. passim.

*

resemblance arose afterwards, when the restoration of those royal families, whom their ascendant had kept under, revived ancient animosities, and excited new ones; those who from love of democratical liberty had borne the most deadly hatred to the apostates who had betrayed it, recovering some affection to their memory, out of aversion to a common enemy. Our English republicans have, with some exceptions, displayed a sympathy for the name of Cromwell; and I need not observe how remarkably this holds good in the case of his mighty parallel.*

THE COMMONWEALTH UNDER RICHARD CROMWELL.

THE EDITOR.

The influence of Cromwell's name sufficed to secure the appointment of his eldest son Richard, to succeed him as protector. But the army, discontented at such a leader, met to cabal against him at his brother-in-law general Fleetwood's house. This was called the Cabal of Wallingford. Their deliberations ended in a remonstrance, and an entreaty that Richard would give up the control of the army. Richard replied that he had given the command of the forces to Fleetwood, who seemed acceptable to them; but that it was impossible for him to give up the power of the sword entirely, as it was lodged in his hands and the parliament's, jointly. The new protector then summoned a parliament. Great dissensions arose in it, and Richard's enemies-which were of his own family-prepared his fall.

"The parliament," said Whitelock, "grew into heats, Hazelrig and Nevil and their party laboured to overthrow the government by a protector and two houses of parliament, and pretended to have a free commonwealth. Desborough (Richard's uncle), Fleetwood, sir Henry Vane, Berry, and others endeavoured to lessen Richard's power, and Lambert, who had long been discontented, closely wrought for that end. Richard consulted with his friends as to whether he should dissolve the parliament; but he had little choice."

The army insisted on his dissolving it, or being considered hostile to the soldiers, and Richard yielded to the demand. Lambert and the other officers then resolved to restore the remaining members of the Long Parliament, called the Rump, whom they had themselves thrust out. On the 6th of May, Fleetwood, Lambert, and the

* Mrs. Macauley, who had nothing of compromise or conciliation in her temper, and breathed the entire spirit of Vane and Ludlow, makes some vigorous and just animadversions on the favour shown to Cromwell by some professors of a regard for liberty. The dissenting writers, such as Neal, and in some measure Harris, were particularly open to this reproach. He long continued (perhaps the present tense is more appropriate) to be revered by the independents. One who well knew the manners he paints, has described the secret idolatry of that sect to their hero-saint. See Crabbe's Tale of the Frank Courtship.

Slingsly Bethell, an exception perhaps to the general politics of this sect, published in 1667 a tract, entitled The World's Mistake in Oliver Cromwell, with the purpose of decrying his policy and depreciating his genius. Harleian Miscellany, i., 280. But he who goes about to prove the world mistaken in its estimate of a public character, has always a difficult cause to maintain. Bethell, like Mrs. Macauley and others, labours to set up the Rump parliament against the soldier who kicked them; and asserts that Cromwell, having found £500,000 in ready money, with the value of £700,000 in stores, and the army in advance of their pay (subject, however, to a debt of near £500,000); the customs and excise bringing in nearly a million annually, left a debt which, in Richard's parliament, was given in at £1,900,000, though he believes this to have been purposely exaggerated in order to procure supplies. I cannot say how far these sums are correct; but it is to be kept in mind, that one great resource of the parliament, confiscation, sequestration, composition, could not be repeated. Neither of these governments, it will be found on inquiry, were economical, especially in respect to the emoluments of those concerned in them.