dons its principle, betrays its cause,-revolts against the power for whom it had assumed arms, by whose able management it had been cherished, and by whose superior counsels it had been directed to victory. But the intolerance of the Presbyterians was become the leading object of resentment and of terror to the sectarists, who formed the body of the army; and the religious phrenzy of these heated spirits was insusceptible of any long views of policy, or of any violent and self-abandoning system of patriotism. If the influence of such enlightened and liberal politicians as Selden and Whitelocke had prevailed in the Parliament over that of the Assembly of Divines, the concession of an unlimited toleration would have preserved the army from those alarms, which alone shook it from its duty and, converting it immediately to the overthrow of the government, made it eventually subservient to its own ruin. Aware of the advantages, which would probably result from it to his own cause, Cromwell carefully watched and fomented the general agitation. In the diminished popularity of the Parliament, in the mutual jealousies of that assembly and the army, in the prevailing lassitude and discontent of the harrassed people he saw and welcomed the means of his own personal aggrandise ment. He had now reached a situation contiguous to that greatness which, only a short time before, had perhaps been removed from his, most sanguine and visionary expectation. Unlike to the first Cæsar, who, aspiring to empire from the commencement of his political career, seems to have advanced by regular and measured steps to the possession of his object, Cromwell, floating loosely on the tide of events, was brought near to a throne, which he had the boldness to seize and the ability to retain. Enthusiasm, which, at first, was the great moving spring of his conduct, became, in the succeeding stages of his progress, the instrument with which he worked; and, from being the dupe of his own feelings, he grew to be the controller of those of other men. He never entirely, indeed,. ceased to be the enthusiast; but, ambition, for a time, obtaining the ascendancy, in his bosom, over the religious passion, he united in himself, at last, with an inconsistency not uncommon in our poor nature, the opposite characters of the zealot and the impostor. When he performed his devotions with the common soldiers, and, thus conciliating their affections, essentially promoted his own purposes and influence, he was not, as I am satisfied, wholly insincere; but had persuaded himself that he could thus allow: ably convert an act of religious duty into a mean of worldly interest. No man, perhaps, ever possessed in a higher degree that rapid and searching glance which can penetrate, and that dexterity which can shape to their proper uses human character and its multiform varieties. For the attainment of ends far different from those proposed to himself by the holy Apostle, Cromwell was " all things to all men;" and could act, with equal facility, on the demand of the immediate occasion, the commander or the buffoon. By the resignation of Fairfax, averse from marching against the Presbyterians in Scotland, he was now advanced to the head of the army, and, being freed by the death of Ireton from the stern and inflexible republicanism of that popular and potent leader, he saw no insuperable obstacle between his hand and the sceptre of England. When he returned from the scenes of his triumph at Dunbar and Worcester, the sovereign power was in fact in his possession; and the nation looked up to the Captain General, for with this, high title he was now decorated, as to P Ireton died of the plague at Limerick, on the 27th of nov. 1651. This seems to be the accurate date: -but some writers have placed his death on the 26th of the preceding september. Bishop Burnet resembles Ireton, for his steady republicanism, to Cassius. the arbiter of its fortunes, and the destined restorer of its tranquillity. His promises were specious and alluring. Of religious toleration he was the sincere friend, and he earnestly professed his desire of convening a free parliament, and of settling the disturbed community either under an equal commonwealth or a limited monarchy. His dismission of the Long Parliament,' though effected with some circumstances of violence and contumely, does not seem to have been felt by the nation as an obnoxious act. It appeared to be justified by the principle of self-defence, for, at the crisis to which things had been urged, either the General or the Parliament must have fallen; and to put a period to an usurpation seemed to be allowable, by whatever hand the deed was accomplished. His electing of a new legislature, by his own authority and without any appeal to the people, could not be a April 19th, 1653. г In this instance certainly the people had nothing to do with the laws but to obey them; and I am rather surprised that, when he made this assertion, the worthy Prelate did not advance in its support the example now before us, of a parliament elected by one man, and that man a victorious general. This parliament was assembled by a summons addressed in the name of the Captain General, &c. to the particular person who was to be à member of the legislature. measure of the same dubious unpopularity: in its support, however, might be pretended the distraction of the times, and the consequent plea of political expediency. The puny Parliament, which was thus assembled, and which, from the name of one of its leading members,' was called Barebone's Parliament, began its sittings on the fourth of july;' but after acting for a few months, as the instrument of Cromwell and with evident incompetency to the task of government, it resigned its power" into the hands of its political creator; and the Captain General, with his military council, found himself the master of a kind of derelict community. In this emergency, the Council of Officers, pretending for their deed a species of parliamentary delegation, undertook to provide for the settlement of the public by placing the government in the hands of their leader, Cromwell, with the title of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England. A provision was made for the convention of a triennial parliament, in the constitution of which some regard was discovered for the people's rights, and the Protector was installed in his high office with great solemnity A leather-seller of Fleet Street. t 1653. |