street, who does not appear, however, to have had anything else ridiculous about him except his name. Properly speaking, it was not a parliament, but rather such a convention as has been more than once called together upon similar emergencies, when circumstances did not permit the election of a parliament. The experiment in this instance, however, did not succeed. They met on the 4th of July, when Cromwell addressed them in a long speech, explaining with much painstaking the reasons or rather the necessity of the course he had taken; but more, apparently, from the insuperable difficulties of the task to which they had been set than owing to any peculiar incompetency in the men, they deemed it expedient on the 12th of December to pass a vote declaring that their sitting any longer would not be for the good of the Commonwealth; and that therefore it was requisite to deliver up unto the Lord General Cromwell the powers which they had received from him.

Again left alone, and as it were Dictator, Cromwell now to the existing Council of State, consisting of the chief officers of the army, associated by invitation a number of "other persons of interest in the nation;" and by this assembly before the end of the week, namely, on Friday, the 16th, he was declared Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland; an instrument or scheme of government being at the same time agreed upon and proclaimed, by which it was appointed that the Lord Protector should be assisted in the administration of affairs by a Council of State composed of fifteen or twenty-one persons, and also that a parliament freely elected by the people, though according to an amended plan of representation, should assemble on the 3rd of September, 1653. Such a parliament, called the First Protectorate Parliament, did accordingly meet on that memorable anniversary; but its proceedings were soon found to have any other tendency rather than that of settling the nation; and the Protector, under the authority vested in him, dissolved it on the 22nd of January thereafter,

Then followed the government of the ten Major-Ge

nerals, military lieutenants of the Lord Protector, each appointed to superintend his district or portion of the country, which lasted for about a year, or from the autumn of 1655 to that of 1656. Meanwhile the Second Protectorate Parliament had been called, and had commenced its sittings on the 17th of September of the latter year. The members had been again elected according to the reformed plan of representation; but the Protector and his council deemed it expedient that of those returned nearly a hundred, being about a fourth of the whole number, should, as disaffected or suspected, be restrained for the present from taking their seats. Their exclusion was an act of arbitrary power, no doubt; it was a proceeding unauthorized by any law, by any clause of the constitution, or instrument of government; but it does not follow that it was in the circumstances either an unwise or wicked exercise of power. The state of affairs was anomalous altogether; the entire edifice and system of the government stood upon a basis of arbitrary authority; inviolable constitutional rights and forms were for settled and ordinary times, not for such a crisis of convulsion and birth-agony as the present. We must understand the summoning of a parliament at all at such a moment to be merely an experiment or effort made with the object of transforming a government which of necessity had till now been a military despotism into a government of law and free institutions. And even with all the precautions that were taken the experiment for the present failed. The last parliament had got itself dismissed for its ultra-democratical tendencies; this one, taking the opposite tack, would be satisfied with nothing less than that the Protector should set up a House of Lords and change his title of Protector for that of King. After much negotiation and consultation Oliver finally rejected the latter proposition; but the House of Lords was actually tried. Sixty-three persons were summoned, of whom above forty attended and formed an Upper House, which commenced its sittings on the 20th of January, 1658, with the second session of this Second Protectorate Parliament. On the preceding 26th of June, also, the day on which

the first session had terminated, a new inauguration or installation of the Lord Protector had been solemnized with extraordinary pomp and ceremony. But the framework of society had not yet sufficiently recovered from the shock of the violent revolution it had passed through; it had not regained sufficient solidity and firmness to stand the working of this or probably of any other political system in which an attempt should be made to combine antagonistic forces. The two Houses, representing the two elements or powers of democracy and aristocracy, could not be brought into harmonious action. The Lord Protector, therefore, found it necessary to dissolve this Second Parliament also before it should do any more mischief. He came down and dismissed the two Houses on the 4th of February, when the session had lasted about a fortnight. The time for parliamentary government in England under the new dynasty, and the new state of things in all respects, had evidently not yet arrived. Only government by a single person, in other words absolutism or despotism, was as yet practicable.

It was fortunate, such being the case, that the country had such a despot or absolute ruler as did actually preside over it. The government of the Protectorate had, except in those respects in which good government was, from the circumstances of the time and the state of men's minds, impossible, been as successful a government as ever was known in England. It was not what is called a free government; the popular sense, or nonsense, had no voice in it; the subject even might be said to have no recognized rights of any kind as against the sovereign. Yet in point of fact any thing deserving the name of oppression was unknown; pertinacious opponents and disturbers of the government were, indeed, in some cases summarily enough disposed of, as was quite necessary; but nobody who chose to live quietly and in due obedience was molested or interfered with; justice, it is admitted on all hands, was fairly administered by the magistrates and courts of law; taxation was light; even freedom of opinion and profession, both political and religious, was permitted and protected so far as was consistent with the

VOL. VII,

D

maintenance of the established institutions and the public peace. An absolute ruler less inclined to blood or cruelty than was Oliver Cromwell never existed; even Clarendon, who hated both the cause and the man, acknowledges that he was always opposed to sanguinary courses. Resolute soldier as he was, and capable as he showed himself to be of using the sword with unsparing severity when such was deemed necessary or expedient, he was unquestionably a kind-hearted man, and, with all the strictness of his religious creed and practice, full of all gentle affections.

England, too, never stood in higher estimation with foreign powers and nations than it did while under the sway of Cromwell; the honour, dignity, and greatness of the country had never been better maintained by any preceding ruler. The Dutch were compelled to sue for peace; advantageous treaties, first of peace, afterwards of alliance, were made with France, one of the results being the acquisition of Dunkirk; Spain was also humbled, and Jamaica wrested from her. No words can be stronger than those of Clarendon upon this part of the Protector's character and conduct:"His greatness at home was but a shadow of the glory he had abroad. It was hard to discover which feared him most, France, Spain, or the Low Countries, where his friendship was current at the value he put upon it. As they did all sacrifice their honour and interest to his pleasure, so there is nothing he could have demanded that either of them would have denied him."

In Clarendon's eyes Cromwell is of course a very wicked, but he is also a very great, man. "He was," he elsewhere says, 66 one of those men whom his very enemies could not condemn without commending him at the same time; for he could never have done half that mischief without great parts of courage, industry, and judgment. He must have had a wonderful understanding in the natures and humours of men, and as great a dexterity in applying them; who from a private and obscure birth (though of a good family), without interest or estate, alliance or friendship, could raise himself to such a

and

height, and compound and knead such opposite and contradictory tempers, humours, and interests into a consistence that contributed to his designs and to their own destruction; whilst himself grew insensibly powerful enough to cut off those by whom he had climbed in the instant that they projected to demolish their own building. What was said of Cinna may very justly be said of him. He attempted those things which no good man durst have ventured on; achieved those in which none but a valiant and great man could have succeeded. Without doubt, no man with more wickedness ever attempted anything, or brought to pass what he desired more wickedly, more in the face and contempt of religion and moral honesty; yet wickedness as great as his could never have accomplished those designs without the assistance of a great spirit, an admirable circumspection and sagacity, and a most magnanimous resolution." This is praise from an enemy that leaves nothing further to be desired.

Clarendon also confirms what we are told by Sir Philip Warwick of the manner in which Cromwell's demeanour and personal presence grew in dignity and elevation with the exaltation of his fortunes :-" When he appeared first in parliament, he seemed to have a person in no degree gracious [graceful], no ornament of discourse, none of those talents which use to conciliate the affections of the stander-by; yet, as he grew into place and authority, his parts seemed to be raised, as if he had had concealed faculties till he had occasion to use them; and when he was to act the part of a great man, he did it without any indecency, notwithstanding the want of custom."

Exertion and anxiety seem to have made Cromwell prematurely old. He has been often quoted as one of the most remarkable examples of the acquisition of great distinction in a public career after it had been entered upon comparatively late in life; and in that respect his case is doubly extraordinary, seeing that the eminence and renown he thus achieved were in two fields, both in statesmanship and in war. He was three-and-forty be