ment in the case. Besides the involuntary sympathy in his favour under whose influence we are thus brought, there is a consistency in his religious manifestations which can only be reconciled with honesty. From the beginning to the end of his course, he is, in this respect, the same; and, what is more, he is found to be the same in the privacy of friendly and domestic relations, as he appears to be in his most public professions. There is nothing in this work more beautiful than the references to religion which are contained in his letters to members of his family. He was not, he could not have been, a hypocrite. There is a manly tone, a nervous vigour, about his piety, which comes too plainly from the heart, and speaks to the heart too strongly, to admit of hypocrisy being regarded as affording the slightest solution of the matter. Religion-true and pure and deep-was pre-eminently distinctive of the Puritan party whose good old cause fell into Cromwell's hands; and of their religion his character forms one of the noblest types. It was this which, more than any thing else, made him the great man of his age; and it was the main glory of that age that such an one-one thus religious-should have been its great man. It gave a moral dignity and power to the civil transactions of the period, to which, except among the records of Jewish history, a parallel cannot be found. It is no wonder that the Jewish Scriptures should, at this time, have exerted the influence upon men's minds which they did; for it was only in those ancient writings-full fraught as they are with the divinity of a religion which was at once the bond of national union and the ground of foreign hostility—that the character of the time was faithfully mirrored.

While we entertain the high opinion we have expressed of Cromwell's religious character, we must not be understood as concurring in the views of religion with which that character stood connected. We make a broad distinction between the sincerity and the truth of his belief; and we think that the errors into which he fell on the subject of religion, were the main cause of those practical evils by which his course was marked. Religion led him not only to recognize, in all things, the hand of God, but to interpret the outward successes he obtained as indications of the will of God. The latter was the fatal principle of his life. If he defeated his enemies, it was to him an evidence that God had espoused his side of the quarrel; and he pursued the path which victory opened to him, as that in which the voice of God commanded him to go. If power lay within his grasp, he seized it, as though by so doing he was fulfilling an act of divine obedience; and whatever instrumentality he could employ toward effecting the objects he had in view, he employed in the religious faith that it had been immediately furnished to him by Heaven. Fortunate as he invariably was, by reason of that practical skill and indomitable courage which he possessed to so great a degree, he came to consider himself as a kind of vicegerent of the Almighty; and what he did, or had the power of doing, he regarded simply on that account as having in its favour the most sacred of sanctions. Such an impression reacted upon the intrepid temper under whose influence it was conceived, and forcibly contributed to produce the victories it sanctified. That such views as these are essentially wrong-that the conformity of a transaction with the will of God is to be inferred, not from its successful issue, but from its

moral nature that the mighty influence of such qualifications as Cromwell possessed is to be accounted for on other principles than that of the direct operation of the Almighty on their side-all this we need not stay to prove. It will, we have no doubt, be freely allowed to us. The legitimate consequence of such a concession is, that much of Cromwell's proceedings may demand our serious disapprobation, though we should forbear to attribute to him personal blame on their account. The more honest he was to his religious convictions, and the more zealously he endeavoured to carry them out, the farther he might have been led astray from what we may judge to have been the true course lying before him. This, we believe, was the case. He suffered no misgivings of heart to restrain him in the use of the severest means which he deemed necessary to the accomplishment of his ends; and all matters of political arrangement he treated as subordinate to the fulfilment of the personal work to which he felt divinely destined. He often forgot the rights of others in the contemplation of what he regarded as the duty devolving upon him, and the necessities which he followed frequently imposed upon him measures of cruelty and oppression. It was, however, in the spirit of an anointed priest of the Most High that he performed these sacrifices; and he never lost sight of the religious character of the vocation with which he believed himself to be called. Whatsoever he thought to be right and good as in the sight of God, he was always ready to perform; and there is nothing more remarkable in him than his steady adherence to what he considered to be the substantial results of national happiness, in spite of his many violations of those constitutional principles upon which, in our judgment, such happiness can alone be securely built.

His disregard of constitutional principles of government constitutes the great charge which we have to bring against Cromwell's policy. There was undoubtedly an intellectual deficiency attaching to him which rendered him especially liable to incur that charge. His intellect was massive and energetic in the extreme, but it did not fit him for any thing like subtle investigation into the grounds and reasons of the interests with which he was concerned. A well-constructed theory had no charms for him; and he had no faith in the working of a machinery, all whose parts were mutually dependent upon each other. The only good he acknowledged was that which existed in some form of immediate practical advantage, and the only means which he relied upon for effecting it, were means whose bearing upon it was direct and palpable. For abstract truth he had no love; and he anticipated but little good from the concession of mere rights. This, notwithstanding Mr. Carlyle's opinion to the contrary, we look upon as a defect. It is a defect almost inseparable from minds like Cromwell's. A consciousness of great strength of personal character producing fearless and unhesitating self-reliance, and manifesting itself by the superiority over others which it invariably gains for its possessor, naturally leads its subject to distrust all means of influence but those accordant with the kind of power with which he is most intimately conversant, and which he has always found worthy of his dependence. Such distrust Cromwell would, under all circumstances, have had; but when to his natural confidence in measures of bold activity rather than in those of settled order, was added the conviction that he himself was conducted along by the special guidance of God,-having been set

apart as the instrument by whom the Divine will was distinctively to be accomplished,-it might surely be expected that the position he would take amid the revolutionary movements of his time, was that of a despotic ruler of the strife. It was to such a position that the idea of a direct appointment of the Almighty to an extraordinary work was most readily applicable; and the belief in such an appointment concurring with the tendency of the natural disposition, would be amply sufficient to repress every scruple which might otherwise be felt to the course adopted.

It has been our undisguised purpose in this investigation of the nature of Cromwell's ambition, to take that view of it which, while it is reconcileable with the facts of the case, is most honourable to his character. This we think to be his due. But we do not suppose that, even on his own principles, every thing relating to him can be reconciled with perfect integrity. A wrong course of action, though innocently adopted, will be sure to involve its subject in moral inconsistencies. It will manifest its real nature by the conscientious difficulties into which it must lead; and if it be persevered in, those difficulties cannot be escaped without leaving some stain behind. So it was here. There are parts of Cromwell's conduct which, as they stood related to his own sense of right, must be visited with severe reprobation: and when he cannot be convicted of sinning against his own conscience, he must frequently be judged as acting from mixed motives, and giving himself exclusive credit for the higher and nobler ones, when the necessities of the case require that we should take into account the existence on his part of what is low and ignoble. The most charitable judgment cannot free him from moral infirmity; but conceding to him his own views of the duty he had to perform, the moral fidelity and restraint which he must have practised toward himself, throw his infirmities completely into the shade.

The dissolution of the Long Parliament was the great evil of Cromwell's proceedings. By that act he brought the government of the country entirely into his own power, and obliged himself to conduct it on the principle of a pure despotic authority. That he sincerely believed in the inefficiency of the Long Parliament for settling the affairs of the nation, and that he had not calculated upon the extent to which he himself, after its dismissal, would be forced to act upon his sole will, we do not doubt. But such considerations as these will not fully account for his conduct. Raised as he was to the topmost place of national honour and influence, and possessed of the supreme command of the army, the complete management of the concerns of the Commonwealth was by the course of events placed entirely within his reach. This position of power and opportunity to which he had attained, formed of itself, in consistency with his opinions and disposition, a sufficient reason why he should take the rule of the kingdom into his hands. We are persuaded that the intention of the Parliament to reduce the army, had a far stronger effect in impelling him to break up that assembly, than any of the arguments by which he afterwards declared himself to have been influenced. To have suffered that intention to be fulfilled, would have been, in his mind, to have departed from the post which had been assigned to him by the Almighty; and though other and inferior inducements urged him to the same end, he was determined not to renounce the station he occupied, because by

so doing he would have seemed to himself to violate his duty to God. In our view of the case, he might have accomplished all the beneficial purposes he proposed, by exercising, in co-operation with the Parliament, that control to which his character and situation entitled him; but such a plan as this he was not prepared to trust, nor did it appear to him to embrace the fulfilment of his special calling.

Of the character and proceedings of the Long Parliament we have formed the highest estimate. It numbered among its members the most illustrious patriots and statesmen whom our country has produced; and its acts, whether relating to domestic or foreign policy, to civil or religious interests, were worthy of the fame of their authors. Whoever builds his judgment on this subject upon what Mr. Carlyle has said, will adopt an erroneous opinion of the matter. Let a man but inform himself of what this body actually did, and we have but little fear of his hesitating to concur in the oft-repeated sentiment of Warburton, that it was composed of " a set of the greatest geniuses for government the world ever saw embarked together in one common cause." They were not kings, says Mr. Carlyle. No: but they did not aspire to be kings. It was something higher and better to which they aspired; and by the standard of these nobler aspirations they will bear to be tried. They laboured for the establishment of that equal freedom of mankind, under the influence of which the title of king gives place to that of brother-man. Sir Harry Vane was not a king. Cromwell was. That, forsooth, is to be the measure of our judgment! Place, then, the two side by side. Gather the principles and intentions of the Commoner from his own eloquent statement of them in his "Healing Question Propounded." As your heart responds to the truth and power of what you read, turn to the King. Alas! he has imprisoned his old friend for the crime of publishing sentiments for which he once helped him to contend! "Look here upon this picture and on that," and then say to whom the prayer is most applicable," The Lord deliver me from thee!"

There were various circumstances which, immediately previous to its dissolution, had weakened the attachment of the nation to the Long Parliament. It was to a great extent a self-constituted body; and it had submitted to violent changes, by which its original character was destroyed. Perhaps the nick-name by which it was called-the Rump -truly expresses the general estimation in which it was held. The obvious course lying before it, in order to settle the government, was the adoption of measures for the election of a new Parliament, which, being chosen by the people, might possess their confidence. Such measures had been projected, and were on the point of being finally carried, when Cromwell drove the members from the House. His forcible expulsion of them was favoured by the unpopularity to which we have just alluded; and was, as we have intimated, in all probability justified to his own mind by his conviction of the validity of the grounds on which that unpopularity was built. We are willing to concede that he acted under the impression of his own ability to establish a better state of things, and intended that his usurpation should be the commencement of a brighter era of national welfare. The propriety of his conduct is, however, to be judged of by a fair comparison between the government he destroyed and that which he created. His main accusation against the Long Parliament was, that its members desired to

perpetuate their own power. This accusation will not bear the examination of facts; but we are willing, for the purpose of our comparison, to assume its truth. We ask, then, on this assumption, whether the government established by Cromwell had not, in all the forms it took, the same irresponsible character which he attributed to the Parliament ? It was from beginning to end essentially a government dependent upon his own will. To it the assent of the nation was never asked. He thus proved by his after conduct that he had no real sympathy with the objection he urged against those whom he superseded; and whatever defence he could offer for himself was open to them as much as to him. We can even afford to put his personal despotism out of the comparison, and estimate his condemnation of the Long Parliament by the manner in which he constituted and dealt with his own Parliaments. The judgment will still be against him. The proof he had that the Long Parliament desired to perpetuate its own power, was contained in the fact, that its members were proposed to be retained in the first Parliament called under the new representation. The mere proportion between the old and new members, according to the projected constitution, will fully demonstrate that this provision could not have had the effect which he attributed to it. But what did he himself do? His first Parliament was chosen entirely by himself. To his second, after it had sat a short time, he presented a declaration in favour of his own authority, for the purpose of excluding those who would not sign it. And from his third, he shut out nearly a hundred of the representatives by his arbitrary fiat alone. These measures were similar in principle, but much worse in form and degree, to that on whose account he had so severely blamed the Long Parliament. By adopting them, he at least acknowledged the wisdom of the policy which had prompted the limitation of popular representation, although he had professed that it was on account of that policy that he had disrupted the Parliament which chose it. His whole proceeding leaves the question between him and the Long Parliament to be decided, not on the grounds of accusation and defence which he alleged-he cut those from under himself-but on the simple ground as to whether government ought to be conducted by the despotic authority of a single person, or according to a constitutional system of national representation. It is in that light that we are anxious to place the subject before our readers.

We have no doubt that, had Cromwell been a legitimate sovereign, his government would have been the best which this country has ever seen. He had every qualification and every desire to make it so; and if he had had at his command the constitutional agencies which our mixed monarchy supplies, his success would have been certain. As it is, we owe much to him, even in his capacity of sovereign. He gained for his country the highest reputation among foreign nations. The value of his home policy will be found chiefly to depend upon the service he did to the cause of religious liberty. His views on that subject were singularly enlightened, and he carried them out as far as he had opportunity. He united the most conscientious endeavours to provide for his people pure religious instruction, with a steady attachment to freedom of opinion. Freedom was not, in his mind, connected with indifference, though he neither employed his power for the exclusive promotion of his own religious views, nor made religion the instru