ON THE CHARACTER OF CROMWELL.

THE feelings which adhere to old-established institutions, and the manner in which those feelings sometimes influence, sometimes yield to events, are commonly left out of calculation in time of revolution by all parties; a truth never more signally exemplified, than by those parties which swayed successively the councils of the Long Parliament. That body madę a noble use of the popular zeal for its privileges, when, on the strength of those alone, it braved the Monarch's personal inroad, and calmly saw his lewd cortège exhaust their impotent rage at its threshold. A spirit equally resolute, though less wise or generous, afterwards incited the same assembly to that ill-treatment of its soldiery which was speedily retorted on itself by the purge. Its still surviving portion, the Rump, took up the functions of the whole original body, with a self-sufficiency unsubdued as ever; and, having exasperated every class, and set at nought the people, leaned with apparently perfect confidence on their sole support, the army. At the moment preceding the violent dissolution of this body, a leader, such as the land had lost in HAMPDEN, might have reconciled the various views of its members with the public interest, and brought its jarring elements to repose. But a very different genius, whose main features we intend to depict, at that time held command over the destinies of his country.

We regard the popular stories of the self-willed boyhood and dissipated early youth of Cromwell, as absurdly overcharged, rather than utterly without foundation. What is left of such accounts, after allowance made for exaggeration, seems consistent enough with his character as subsequently developed. His mind may have come all the more advantageously in contact with the rude tempers on which it had to work, from that premature acquaintance with the world by which it had been hardened and coarsened. Loose intercourse with every class of persons, while it contributed to sharpen his extraordinary insight into character, and unequalled power of playing upon its weaknesses, may have engendered unbelief and incapacity for any very high pitch of virtue. Even the accesses of superstition, consequent so often, and, in Cromwell's case, so signally, on youthful transgressions, must have enabled him more surely to seize the sympathies, and strike in with the enthusiasm of his party; while, by obscuring in his own mind the plain principles of morality, they left him open to the hour of temptation; and, by requiring to be exhibited with interludes of mere grimace, they completed that most dangerous of all human characters, in which enthusiasm combines with imposture.

At the time when Cromwell's military fame blazed out with full splendour, (in the second campaign of the civil wars,) nothing could be more urgent than the need of such a genius to retrieve from utter shipwreck the affairs of the Parliament. The untimely death of Hampden, the incapacity of Waller, the ambiguous and dilatory conduct of Essex,on the other hand, the multiplied successes of the Royalists, the junction of the Queen's forces, and the capture of Bristol,-cast a shade of deep despondence on the popular cause. The proposition of the Lords for peace was met with feeble opposition in the Commons; and there was a moment when the Monarch might, perhaps, have marched to London, without asking leave of either assembly. At this moment, almost the only point of strength and confidence was the association of the eastern

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counties, of which Cromwell was the life and soul. In conjunction with Fairfax, he made face to the superior force of Newcastle. The victories at Horncastle and Selby, the successes of Manchester, and the seige of York, formed some set-off against the many reverses which had been caused by the misconduct of the generals in the west, and reanimated the fast-decaying embers of public spirit; which were soon after blown into a steadier flame, by the opportune junction of the Scots, and the ever-memorable victory of Marston Moor.

The conduct of Cromwell and his party, during the year 1647, after the surrender of the King's person by the Scots had consummated the ruin of his cause, was little understood at the time, and has been much misrepresented since. Contemporaries of a revolution constantly fall into the grand mistake of ascribing to the personal or secret influence of individuals, a power which it can never exert. And later writers double the delusion, by misapplying all they know of the result of the struggle, to account for actions which, although they may have helped to produce that result, were yet performed without the most remote foresight of it. The conduct of the only constitutionally-recognized contending parties, at the crisis we are treating of, shows how thoroughly they succeeded in deceiving themselves with regard to the true posture of affairs. The Parliament, having reached the highest pinnacle of power to which a military triumph could exalt it, was proceeding without ceremony, without even payment of arrears, to break and disperse the instruments of that triumph, in full confidence that their acts and resolutions would receive implicit obedience from men with arms in their hands,—men who were conscious that to them belonged the chief merit of victory, and the sole power to guard and to improve its fruits. The King, a captive in the hands of that soldiery which had subdued him, believed firmly, and continually repeated, that "They could not do without him; that they would fall to ruin if he did not sustain them." And neither King nor Parliament understood, that in time of revolution, masses of men act in the ratio of their moral or their physical force alone, unimpeded by artificial forms, and names, and regulations. The Independents saw deeper into the actual state of things; and Cromwell, while resolved to throw away no advantage which existing institutions could afford him, saw clearly where the real force lay, and prepared to watch and follow the course of events. He treated with the King, till Charles's arrogance and duplicity rendered all farther intercourse impossible. He sat and voted in the Parliament, till their designs upon his person compelled him to seek safety in secession. Each party at length discovered its mistake. Charles endeavoured to redeem his imprudence towards the army, first by change of tone, and afterwards by flight. The Commons had recourse, in their extremity, to the royal name as a rallying point, and resolved, "That his Majesty's concessions to the propositions of Parliament afforded sufficient ground for settling the peace of the kingdom." It was too late. The Monarch was re-captured, and the Parliament was purged by the army. In all this it is difficult to discover the Machiavelian policy ascribed to Cromwell, and traced to the dim visions of his future exaltation, which are imagined to have urged him onward. His conduct was simply that of a clear-sighted, cool-headed politician, awake to existing circumstances, and guided by them as they rose. Alienated by the impracticable temper of the King, apprehensive of the sinister schemes of the Parliament towards his person, he was forced to take re

fuge with the army, and finally induced to co-operate with its zeal for bringing Charles to justice.

It was no vulgar appetite for splendour which induced Cromwell's later attempts to obtain for himself the title and externals of royalty. He knew how such insignia impose upon the mass of mankind; and as his object was to gain the acclamations of the multitude, his policy was to captivate their unreflecting homage by the pomp and retinue of a court. Thus flattered in their old associations, the people would give vent to their old feelings of loyalty; Parliaments would hail the royal sanction restored to their acts, and the nobles of the land would resume their functions in the legislature. Strong in the support of recognized power and rooted prejudice, he might defy the ephemeral factions which had no real hold upon the permanent wants and feelings of Englishmen, and which, though dangerous to a system equally baseless with themselves, would die away beneath a dynasty combining all the stability of old established forms, with all the vigour of new principles of government. There was little to be said against the soundness of these views, excepting that the actual state of affairs offered no sufficient means for their accomplishment. So far from smoothing the way for his ascent to the throne, the first Parliament summoned by him, after his violent close of the Rump, brought his title into question as Protector! On the angry dissolution of this body by Cromwell, discontent throughout the three kingdoms soon made it evident that their spirit had been a very faithful index of the People's. The Scots and Irish hated the Protector as their conqueror; and the English Presbyterians, for the most part, shared the virulence of their northern co-religionists against him; and even Royalists spoke the language, and struck in with the designs of the Republicans, in their eagerness for his downfal. It was now that Cromwell, urged beyond endurance by the tacit ban of outlawry which seemed to have gone forth against him, from the heart of every sect and denomination of his enemies, suspended all design of constitutional government, and introduced an iron regimen of force and terror.

On the general outcry caused by the oppressions of his major-generals, the Protector made a last desperate effort to establish his dominion on a legal foundation; an attempt in which the very first steps foreboded certain and inevitable failure. He summoned a new Parliament, but, fearing to meet a free one, not only employed those very major-generals, whom he was anxious to get rid of, in controlling the elections; but, alleging that the writs being issued by Chancery, and returnable to it, could only be judged of by that Court, issued an order that none but such as could produce a ticket from it, signed by the Clerk of the Commonwealth, should be allowed to take their seats: and enforced the mandate, by posting a party of soldiers at the doors of the House. When a Parliament, thus pruned of all pretensions to the title of a popular assembly, at length agreed, in a "Humble Petition and Advice" to the Protector, that he would take upon himself the title of King, it was quite in the course of things that the army, which now felt itself the moving spring of every transaction, which dreaded the erection of any regular form of government as a death-blow to its lawless importance, and which, moreover was stirred up by its officers, whose hopes of succeeding to the office of Protector would have been crushed by the institution of hereditary monarchy; that the army, like a serviceable demon, at length should claim its turn to be master. The claim was irresistible; and Cromwell, when persuasion and delay were exhausted, was finally

compelled to refuse the proffered dignity, the object of his cherished and deliberate wishes.

Men treat the maxims of morality, as they treat their old friends, in the successful course of selfish ambition; but, when neglect and insult have ended in incurable alienation, the wrong is repented, and the void felt. The Protector had estranged himself too long from law and order to rejoin them by a royal road. Every attempt to strengthen the foundation of his government had only served to shake it to its centre. Threats, not obscure, of his destruction by the soldiery, had deterred him from accepting the crown; and his abortive attempt to form an Upper House had been received with derision by the Commons. Thrown back on the support of his janissaries, he had to cope with their growing discontent, as well as with the national abhorrence inspired by their licentious power. Plots and insurrections were multiplied; and every thing announced the last convulsions of a system, supported by brute force alone, and opposed to all that yet survived of national will and feeling. Death, however, rescued the author of the system from witnessing the agonies of his own monstrous creation.

It has lately become fashionable to speak of Cromwell as of a masterspirit, entitled by his mere superiority to assume the arbitration of political institutions, and to hold himself exempted from that ordinary morality which might have sown a few scruples in his path to greatness. It is probable that he himself had some of these visions, and attributed perhaps to his own personal energies the whole result of those chances which consigned to his disposal so many patriotic hopes to disappoint, so many splendid opportunities to abuse. It is a fatal error of those who have been raised above the mass by the consent and the assistance of their fellows, to suppose that their greatness is an inseparable appendage of themselves, irresumable by those whose suffrage bestowed it. Yet an unbiassed inquirer into the springs of human action, ere he proceed to pass sentence on the character of Cromwell, will consider how far the real moral nature of his acts may have been modified by circumstances too minute and evanescent to have come under the cognisance of history. History can give us no idea whatsoever of those hidden dispositions of the mind and heart, which in the hour of unrestrained familiarity alone could have been opened to the eye of a contemporary observer. And to such an eye as Cromwell's, so habituated to fix upon the practically important points of character, so skilful to improve the opportunities afforded by the license of discourse which he systematically encouraged, how much must have been visible of the inmost soul of others which never found occasion to display itself in action, and of which the only trace is its presumable effect upon the conduct and career of that acute spectator! He may have watched the secret workings of ambition which only wanted means to be as criminal as his own. He may have traced to their dark origin those elements of weakness, and disunion, and discord, which gave something like a colour to his own asseveration, "That he was forced to take upon him the office of High Constable to preserve peace among the several parties in the nation." Conjectures such as these will be allowed due weight by those who know best how insecure a bond of union are the most pure and lofty principles, between mortal men; how constantly lost sight of; how deliberately sacrificed to the paltriest personal impulses of passion and of egotism, the cravings of a despicable vanity or envy !

In our own experience, some of us may have met with men who lacked little of the character faintly sketched in the foregoing pages, except, perhaps, the element of enthusiasm in religion; and who probably did not lack much for a similar career, but the recurrence of a similar conjuncture; men whom, like Cromwell, natural qualities, or early education, have fitted rather for the society of their fellows than for the task of self-inspection or retired study; men, in whom if there is any thing more astonishing than the fervour of zeal which they can devote to any object, it is the transferable nature of that fervour, and the almost equal facility with which it can be brought to bear on the most important aim, or on the merest trifle; men, of whom it is impossible to trust the perfect honesty, as, even in their most disinterested actions, is perceptible the all-pervading leaven of their own personality; yet whom it is equally difficult to suppose to be deliberately actuated by the contrary disposition, from the apparent warmth, and candour, and sincerity, with which they contrive to veil from others, nay, even from themselves, the reality of selfishness and egotism. In private life, such men are very commonly unblameable; kind husbands, tender parents, and affectionate friends. As public men, in ordinary times, they may be brave soldiers, active men of business, ardent men of party, effective and unscrupulous ministers of power. But in time of revolution, opportunity serving, such men have just the qualities and dispositions requisite for the betrayal of the public cause, apostacy, and usurpation.

Heath says, in his "Chronicle," that a conspiracy was formed by the republican Colonel Rathbone and others, for seizing the tower; and that the third of September was selected by an astrological scheme, as a day which portended the destruction of the monarchy.