TRIUMPH OF THE COMMONS.

XI.

17

ject England to the perpetual executive power of a CHAP. close corporation, was far less favorable to equal freedom and to progress than monarchy itself. Not one of the proposed methods of government was capable of being realized. Lilbourne's was, perhaps, the most consistent, but was equally impracticable.

If the execution of Charles be considered by the rule of utility, its effects will be found to have been entirely bad. A free parliament would have saved the king, and reformed church and state; in aiming at the immediate enjoyment of democratic liberty, the statesmen of that day long delayed the actual progress of popular enfranchisements. Nations change their institutions but slowly to attempt to pass abruptly from feudalism and monarchy to democratic equality, was the thought of enthusiasts, who understood neither the history, the character, nor the condition of the country. It was like laying out into entirely new streets, a city that was already crowded with massive structures, resting on firm foundations. Cromwell alone profited by the death of the king: the deed was his policy, and not the policy of the nation.

The remaining members of the commons were now by their own act constituted the sole legislature and sovereign.of England. The peerage was abolished with monarchy; the connection between state and church rent asunder; but there was no republic. Selfish ambition forbade it; the state of society and the distribution and tenure of property forbade it. The commons usurped not only all powers of ordinary legislation, but even the right of remoulding the constitution. They were a sort of collective, self-constituted, perpetual dictatorship. Like Rome under its decemviri, England was enslaved by its legislators; English

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XI.

COUNTER REVOLUTION.

CHAP. liberty had become the patrimony and estate of the commons; the forms of government, the courts of justice, peace and war, all executive, all legislative power, rested with them. They were irresponsible, absolute, and apparently never to be dissolved but at their own pleasure.

But the commons were not sustained by the public opinion of the nation. They were resisted by the royalists and the Catholics, by the Presbyterians and the fanatics, by the honest republicans and the army. In Ireland, the Catholics dreaded the worst cruelties that Protestant bigotry could inflict. Scotland, almost unanimous in its adhesion to Presbyterianism, regarded with horror the rise of democracy, and the triumph of the Independents; the fall of the Stuarts foreboded the overthrow of its independence; it loved liberty, but it loved its nationality also. It feared the sovereignty of an English parliament, and desired the restoration of monarchy as a guaranty against the danger of being treated as a conquered province. In England, the opulent landholders, who swayed their ignorant dependents, rendered popular institutions impossible; and too little intelligence had as yet been diffused through the mass of the people, to make them capable of taking the lead in the progress of civilization. The fruitful schemes of social and civil equality found no support but in the enthusiasm of the few who fostered them; and the heaviest clouds of discontent gathered sullenly round the nation.

The attempt at a counter revolution followed. But the parties by which it was made, though a vast majority of the three nations, were filled with mutual antipathies; the Catholics of Ireland had no faith in the Scottish Presbyterians; and these in their turn

COUNTER REVOLUTION SUPPRESSED BY THE ARMY.

XI.

19

were full of distrust and hatred of the English Cava- CHAP. liers. They feared each other as much as they feared the commons. There could therefore be no concert of opposition; the insurrections, which, had they been made unitedly, had probably been successful, were not simultaneous. The Independents were united; their strength lay in a small but well-disciplined army; the celerity and military genius of Cromwell ensured to them unity of counsels and promptness of action; they conquered their adversaries in detail; and the massacre of Drogheda, the field of Dunbar, and the victory of Worcester, destroyed the present hopes of the friends of monarchy.

The lustre of Cromwell's victories ennobled the crimes of his ambition. When the forces of the insurgents had been beaten down, there remained but two powers in the state, the Long Parliament and the army. To submit to a military despotism was inconsistent with the genius of the people of England; and yet the Long Parliament, now containing but a fraction of its original members, could not be recognized as the rightful sovereign of the country, and possessed only the shadow of executive power. Public confidence rested on Cromwell alone. The few true republicans had no party in the nation; a dissolution of the parliament would have led to anarchy; a reconciliation with Charles II., whose father had just been executed, was impossible; a standing army, it was plausibly argued, required to be balanced by a standing parliament; and the house of commons, the mother of the commonwealth, insisted on nursing the institutions which it had established. But the public mind reasoned differently; the virtual power rested with the army; men dreaded confusion, and sighed for peace; and

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XI.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

CHAP. they were pleased with the retributive justice that the parliament, which had destroyed the English king, should itself be subverted by one of its members.

Thus the attempt at absolute monarchy on the part of Charles I., yielded to a constitutional, true English parliament; the control of parliament passed from the constitutional royalists to the Presbyterians, or representatives of a part of the aristocracy opposed to Episcopacy; from the Presbyterians to the Independents, the enthusiasts, real or pretended, for popular liberty; and now that the course of the revolution had outstripped public opinion, a powerful reaction gave the supreme authority to Cromwell. Sovereignty had

escaped from the king to the parliament, from the parliament to the commons, from the commons to the army, and from the army to its successful commander. Each revolution was a natural and necessary consequence of its predecessor.

Cromwell was one of those rare men whom even his enemies cannot name without acknowledging his greatness. The farmer of Huntingdon, accustomed only to rural occupations, unnoticed till he was more than forty years old, engaged in no higher plots than how to improve the returns of his farm, and fill his orchard with choice fruit, of a sudden became the best officer in the British army, and the greatest statesman of his time; subverted the English constitution, which had been the work of centuries; held in his own grasp the liberties which the English people had fixed in their affections, and cast the kingdoms into a new mould. Religious peace, such as England till now has never again scen, flourished under his calm mediation; justice found its way even among the remotest Highlands of Scotland; commerce filled the English marts

OLIVER CROMWELL.

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XI.

with prosperous activity under his powerful protection; CHAP. his fleets rode triumphant in the West Indies; Nova Scotia submitted to his orders without a struggle; the Dutch begged of him for peace as for a boon; Louis XIV. was humiliated; the pride of Spain was humbled; the Protestants of Piedmont breathed their prayers in security; the glory of the English name was spread throughout the world.

And yet the authority of Cromwell marks but a period of transition. His whole career was an attempt to conciliate a union between his power and permanent public order; and the attempt was always unavailing, from the inherent impossibility growing out of the origin of his power. It was derived from the submission, not from the will of the people; it came by the sword, not from the nation, or from established national usages. Cromwell saw the impracticability of a republic, and offered no excuse for his usurpations, but the right of the strongest to restore tranquillity-the old plea of tyrants and oppressors from the beginning of the world. He had made use of the enthusiasm of liberty for his advancement; he sought to sustain himself by conciliating the most opposite sects. For the republicans he had apologies; "the sons of Zeruiah, the lawyers, and the men of wealth, are too strong for us. If we speak of reform, they cry out that we design to destroy all propriety." To the witness of the young Quaker against priestcraft and war, he replied, "It is very good; it is truth; if THOU and I were but an hour of a day together, we should be nearer one to the other." From the field of Dunbar he had charged the Long Parliament "to reform abuses, and not to multiply poor men for the benefit of the rich." Presently he appealed to the moneyed men and the lawyers;