the express purpose of building up the English commercial marine at the
expense of the Dutch. The latter were then the world’s carriers on the
ocean. They derived an immense profit from carrying the goods of other
countries, in their own bottoms, from these other countries to England.
The Navigation Act forbade this, allowing only English bottoms to be
used to carry goods to England, unless the goods were carried in the
ships of the country from which they came. This is the kind of measure
especially condemned by the _laissez-faire_ school of economists, and
its good results in this case have always puzzled them; while, on the
other hand, its success under one set of conditions has been often
ignorantly held to justify its application under entirely different
conditions. In other words, like the system of protective tariffs, it is
one of those economic measures which may or may not be useful to a
country, according to changes in time and circumstances. In the
Cromwellian period it benefited the English as much as it hurt the
Dutch, and laid the foundation of English commercial supremacy. Another
cause of war was the insistance by the English upon their right to have
their flag saluted by the Dutch as well as by other foreign powers.
There followed a bloody and obstinate struggle for the mastery of the
seas. Battle after battle was fought between the Dutch and English
fleets. The latter were commanded by Blake, Monk, Dean, and other
officers, who had won distinction ashore—for the process of
differentiation between military service on land and on the sea was far
from complete. The fighting was most determined, and the Dutch won two
or three victories; but they were defeated again and again, until
finally beaten into submission. The war was one undertaken purely from
motives of commercial greed, against the nation which, among all the
nations of continental Europe, stood closest to England in religious
belief, in form of government, in social ideas, and in its system of
political liberty. Cromwell hated the thought of the two free Protestant
powers battling one another to exhaustion, while every ecclesiastical
and political tyranny looked on with a grin of approbation. He wished
the alliance, not the enmity, of Holland; and though, when the war was
once on, he and those he represented refused in any way to embarrass
their own government, yet they were anxious for peace. The Parliament,
on the other hand, hailed the rise of the Navy under Blake as a
counterpoise to the power of the army under Cromwell. One effect of this
Dutch War was to postpone the question of the dissolution of Parliament;
another, to cause increased taxation, which was met by levying on the
estates of the Royalist Delinquents, so-called.
[Illustration:
Admiral Robert Blake.
From the portrait at Wadham College, Oxford.
By permission of the Master of Wadham.
]
By March, 1653, the Dutch were evidently beaten, and peace was in sight;
but before peace came, there was an end of the Rump Parliament. The
discontent in the army had steadily increased. They wished a thorough
reform in governmental methods; and with the characteristic Puritan
habit of thought, wished especially to guarantee the safety of the
“Godly interests” by a complete new election. On the other hand, the
Parliament was scheming how to yield in name only, and not in fact, and
had hit on the device of passing a bill which should continue all the
members of the existing Parliament without reëlection; and, moreover,
should constitute them a general committee, with full power to pass upon
the qualifications of any new members elected. This, of course, amounted
to nothing, and the army would not accept it.
Many conferences of the leaders of the two sides were held at Cromwell’s
house, the last on the evening of April 19, 1653, young Sir Harry Vane,
formerly one of Cromwell’s close friends, being among the number of the
Parliamentary leaders. Cromwell, on behalf of his party, warned them
that their bill could not be accepted or submitted to, and the
Parliamentary leaders finally agreed that it should not be brought up
again in the House, until after further conference. But they either did
not or could not keep their agreement. The members of the House were
obstinately resolved to keep their places—many of them from corrupt
motives, for they had undoubtedly made much money out of their
positions, through the taxing of delinquents and otherwise. In short,
they wished to perpetuate their government, to have England ruled by a
little self-perpetuating oligarchy. Next morning, April 20th, Parliament
met and the leaders began to hurry the Bill through the House.
[Illustration:
Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament.
Having commanded the soldiers to clear the hall, he himself went out
last, and ordering the doors to be locked, he departed to his
lodgings.—Hume and Smollett’s “History.”
]
They reckoned without their host. Cromwell, sitting in his
reception-room, and waiting the return of the conferees of last evening,
learned what was going on, and just as he was clad, “in plain black
clothes and gray worsted stockings,” followed by a few officers and
twenty or thirty stark musketeers, he walked down to the House. There he
sat and listened for some time to the debate on the Bill, once beckoning
over Harrison, the Republican general, his devoted follower. When the
question was put as to whether the Bill should pass, he rose and broke
in with one of his characteristic speeches. First, he enumerated the
good that had been done by Parliament, and then began to tell them of
their injustice, their heed to their own self-interests, their delay to
do right. One among his eager listeners called him to order, but no
appeal to Parliamentary forms could save the doomed House. “Come, come!”
answered Oliver, “we have had enough of this; I will put an end to your
prating!” With that he clapped on his hat, stamped on the floor with his
feet, and began to rate the Commons as if they were disobedient
school-boys. “It is not fit that you should sit here any longer; you
have sat too long for any good that you have been doing lately; you
shall now give place to better men!” And Harrison called in the
musketeers. Oliver then continued, enumerating the sins of the members,
some of whom were drunkards, some lewd livers, some corrupt and unjust.
The house was on its feet as he lifted the mace, saying: “What shall we
do with this bauble? Take it away!” and gave it to a musketeer; and
then, turning toward the Speaker: “Fetch him down!” and fetched down he
was. Gloomily the members went out, while Cromwell taunted Sir Harry
Vane with breaking his promise, ending with: “The Lord deliver me from
thee, Sir Harry Vane!” So ended the Long Parliament and, asserted
Oliver, “We did not hear a dog bark at their going.”
Tomes have been written to prove whether Oliver was right or wrong in
what he did at this time; but the Rump Parliament had no claim to be,
either in law or fact, the representative of the English people, or of
any part of them that really counted. There was no justification for its
continuance, and no good whatever could come from permitting it to exist
longer. Its actions, and especially its obstinate determination to
perpetuate its own rule, without warrant in law, without the even higher
and more perilous warrant of justice and national need, rendered it
necessary that it should be dissolved. At the time Cromwell, without
doubt, intended that it should be replaced by a genuinely representative
body; and if he had possessed the temper, the self-control, the
far-sighted patriotism, and the personal disinterestedness which would
have enabled him to carry out his intentions in good faith, without
thinking of his own interests, he would have rendered an inestimable
public service and might have advanced by generations the movement for
English liberty.
In other words, if Cromwell had been a Washington, the Puritan
Revolution might have been made permanent. His early acts, after the
dissolution of the Long Parliament, showed a sincere desire on his part,
and on the part of those whose leader he was, to provide some form of
government which should secure justice and order, without leaving
everything to the will of one man. His first effort was to summon an
assembly of the Puritan notables. In the interim he appointed a new
Council of State, with himself, as Captain-General, at its head. The
fleet, the army, and the Independents generally, all hastened to pledge
him their support, and England undoubtedly acquiesced in his action,
being chiefly anxious to see whether or not the new Assembly could
formulate a permanent scheme of government. If the Assembly and Cromwell
together could have done this—that is, could have done work like that of
the great Convention which promulgated the Constitution of the United
States—all would have gone well.
In criticising Cromwell, however, we must remember that generally in
such cases an even greater share of blame must attach to the nation than
to the man. Free government is only for nations that deserve it; and
they lose all right to it by licentiousness, no less than by servility.
If a nation cannot govern itself, it makes comparatively little
difference whether its inability springs from a slavish and craven
distrust of its own powers, or from sheer incapacity on the part of its
citizens to exercise self-control and to act together. Self-governing
freemen must have the power to accept necessary compromises, to make
necessary concessions, each sacrificing somewhat of prejudice, and even
of principle, and every group must show the necessary subordination of
its particular interests to the interests of the community as a whole.
When the people will not or cannot work together; when they permit
groups of extremists to decline to accept anything that does not
coincide with their own extreme views; or when they let power slip from
their hands through sheer supine indifference; then they have themselves
chiefly to blame if the power is grasped by stronger hands. Yet, while
keeping all this in mind, it must not be forgotten that a great and
patriotic leader may, if the people have any capacity for
self-government whatever, help them upwards along their hard path by his
wise leadership, his wise yielding to even what he does not like, and
his wise refusal to consider his own selfish interests. A people
thoroughly unfit for self-government, as were the French at the end of
the eighteenth century, are the natural prey of a conscienceless tyrant
like Napoleon. A people like the Americans of the same generation can be
led along the path of liberty and order by a Washington. The English
people, in the middle of the seventeenth century, might have been helped
to entire self-government by Cromwell, but were not sufficiently
advanced politically to keep him from making himself their absolute
master if he proved morally unequal to rising to the Washington level;
though doubtless they would not have tolerated a man of the Napoleonic
type.
[Illustration:
Oliver Cromwell.
From the painting at Althorp by Robert Walker.
By permission of Earl Spencer, K.G.
]
The Assembly gathered in July, 1653. It was called the “Barebones”
Parliament in derision, because one of its members—a Puritan
leather-merchant—was named “Praise-God Barbon.” The members were men of
high character, of intense religious fervor, and, for the most part, of
good social standing. They were actuated by sincere conviction, but they
had no political training whatever. They were not accustomed to make
government move; they were theorists, rather than doers. Religious
fervor, or mere fervor for excellence in the abstract, is a great
mainspring for good work in politics as in war, but it is no substitute
for training, in either civil or military life; and if not accompanied
by sound common-sense and a spirit of broad tolerance, it may do as much
damage as any other mighty force which is unregulated.
On July 4th, Cromwell opened the Assembly with a long speech, which,
toward the end, became a true Puritan sermon; a speech which had in it a
very high note of religion and morality, but which showed a growing
tendency in Oliver’s mind to appeal from the judgment of men to what he
esteemed the judgment of Heaven, whenever he thought men were wrong.
Now, it is very essential that a man should have in him the capacity to
defy his fellows if he thinks that they are doing the work of the Devil,
and not the work of the Lord; but it is even more essential for him to
remember that he must be most cautious about mistaking his own views for
those of the Lord; and also to remember that as the Lord’s work is
accomplished through human instruments, and as these can only be used to
advantage by remembering that they are human, and, therefore, imperfect,
in the long run a man can do nothing of permanence, save by joining his
zeal to sound judgment, moderation, and the desire to accomplish
practical results.
The Assembly of Puritan notables was no more competent to initiate
successful self-government in England than a Congress of Abolitionists,
in 1860, would have been competent to govern the United States. They did
not lack in lofty devotion to their ideals, but their methods were
impractical. Cromwell professed to have resigned his power into their
hands, and they went at their work in a spirit of high religious
enthusiasm. The “instrument,” under which they were summoned, had
provided that their authority should be transferred to another assembly
elected under their directions; in other words, they were to form a
constitutional Convention. They undertook a host of reforms, largely in
the right direction. Among other things, they proposed the abolition of
the Court of Chancery, the establishment of civil marriage, the
abolition of tithes, and of lay patronage. The clergy and the lawyers
were cast into a frenzy of alarm over these proposals, and the landed
proprietors became very uneasy lest some of their own unjust vested
interests should suffer.
Now, all this was most excellent in point of moral purpose, just as it
would have been absolutely right, from the abstract ethical stand-point,
if the Constitution of 1789, or the Republican Convention of 1860, had
declared for the abolition of slavery in all the States. Of course, if
the Constitution had made such a declaration, it would never have been
adopted, and the English-speaking people of North America would have
plunged into a condition of anarchy like that of the after-time South
American Republics; while, if the Republican platform of 1860 had taken
such a position, Lincoln would not have been elected, no war for the
Union would have been waged, and instead of slavery being abolished, it
would have been perpetuated in at least one of the confederacies into
which the country would have been split. The Barebones Parliament was
too far ahead of the times, too indifferent to results, and too
impatient of the limitations and prejudices of its neighbors. Its
members were reformers, who lost sight of the fact that a reform must be
practicable in order to make it of value. They excited the utmost
suspicion in the community at large, and Cromwell, whose mind was in
many respects very conservative, and who was an administrator rather
than a constructive statesman, shared the general uneasiness. He shrank
from the acts of the Barebones Parliament just as he had shrunk from the
levelling tendencies of the Republicans. The leaders of both had gone
too far in the direction of speculative reform. Cromwell erred on the
other side, and did not go far enough. It is just as necessary for the
practical man to remember that his practical qualities are useless, or
worse than useless, unless he joins with them that spirit of striving
after better things which marks the reformer, as it is for this same
reformer to remember that he cannot give effective expression to his
desire for a higher life save by following rigidly practical ways.
Cromwell, in his opening address to the Convention, had been carried
away by his religious enthusiasm, and in a burst of strange, rugged
eloquence had bid his hearers remember that they must “hold themselves
accountable to God only;” must own their call to be from Him, and must
strive to bring about God’s rule upon earth. When they took his words
literally he became heartily uneasy, as did the great bulk of
Englishmen; for, of course, there were limitless interpretations to be
put as to the proper way of being “owned” by God, and Oliver was not in
the least inclined to accept the interpretation adopted by the Barebones
Parliament. He wished administrative reform in Church and State, but he
had little sympathy with what he deemed revolutionary theories, whether
good or bad.
The Convention gradually grew conscious that it had no support in
popular sympathy, and dissolved of its own motion, after having named a
Council of State, which drew up a remarkable Constitution under the name
of the “Instrument of Government.” This Instrument was adopted by
Cromwell and the Council of Officers, and under it a new Parliament was
convened. Even yet, Cromwell, and at least the majority of the army,
shrank from abandoning every effort at constitutional rule in favor of
the naked power of the sword. Nevertheless, Cromwell had even less
fondness for the rule of a Parliament elected under any conditions he
was able to devise. He realized that the majority of the nation was
against him, and dreaded lest it might take steps toward the
rehabilitation of the monarchy. In his address to the Barebones
Convention he had dwelt with special emphasis upon the fact that a
Parliament elected merely by the majority might not be nearly so
suitable for doing the Lord’s work as such an assembly as that he had
convened.
In short, all his qualities, both good and bad, tended to render the
forms and the narrowly limited powers of constitutional government
irksome to him. His strength, his intensity of conviction, his delight
in exercising powers for what he conceived to be good ends; his dislike
of speculative reforms and his inability to appreciate the necessity of
theories to a practical man who wishes to do good work; his hatred of
both King and oligarchy, while he utterly distrusted a popular majority;
his tendency to insist upon the superiority of the moral law, as he saw
it, to the laws of mankind round about him—all these tendencies worked
together to unfit him for the task of helping a liberty-loving people on
the road toward freedom.
The Instrument of Government was a very remarkable document. It was a
written constitution. Cromwell and his soldiers desired, like Washington
and his fellow-members of the Constitutional Convention which framed the
government of the United States, to have the fundamental law of the land
put in shape where it would be accessible to all men, and where its
terms would not be open to doubt. Such a course was absolutely necessary
if a free government, in the modern sense, was to be established on
radically new lines. It has not been rendered necessary in the free
England of to-day, because, very fortunately, England has been able to
reach her freedom by evolution, not revolution.
The Instrument of Government confided the executive power to a Lord
Protector and Council; Cromwell was named as the first Protector. The
legislative power was assigned without restriction to a Parliament
elected by constituencies formed on a new and equitable franchise, there
being a sweeping redistribution of seats. Parliament could pass a Bill
over the Protector’s veto, and was to meet once in three years, for at
least five months; but it had little control over the executive, save
that with it rested the initiative in filling vacancies in the Council.
The Protector was allotted a certain fixed sum, which made him largely
independent of the Parliament’s action. Nevertheless, the Protector was
under real constitutional control. Religious liberty was secured for all
congregations which did not admit “papacy or prelacy,” the Episcopalians
and Roman Catholics being excluded from this right just as they were
excluded from the right of voting, rather as enemies to the Commonwealth
than because of their mere religious beliefs. They were regarded as what
would now be called, in the political terminology of continental Europe,
“irreconcilables”; and the mass and the Prayer-Book were both
prohibited. Until the first Parliament met, which was to be on the
anniversary of the Battle of Dunbar, on September 3, 1654, the Protector
and Council were to issue ordinances with the force of law.
The Constitution thus had very many points of difference from that under
which the United States grew into a great nation. Yet it ranks with it,
rather than with the system of Parliamentary supremacy which was
ultimately adopted in England. It was, of course, less popular, in the
true sense, than the government of either the United States or Great
Britain at the present moment. Oliver, later on, insisted on what he
called the “Four Fundamentals,” which answered to what we now style
Constitutional Rights. His position was strictly in accord with the
American, as opposed to the English, theory of embodying, by preference
in some written document, propositions which neither the law-making body
nor the executive could modify. It was not to be expected that he should
hit on the device of a Supreme Court to keep guard over these
propositions.
On December 16, 1653, Oliver was installed at Westminster, as Lord
Protector. The judges, the army, the fleet, the mass of Independents,
and the bulk of well-to-do citizens, concurred in the new departure; for
the Protectorship gave stability, and the election of the new Parliament
the assurance of liberty. There were plenty of opponents, however. The
Royalists were implacable. The exiled House of Stuart, with a baseness
of which their great opponent was entirely incapable, sought to compass
his assassination. They could in no other way hope to reach the man whom
they dared not look in the face on the field of battle. Plot after plot
was formed to kill the Protector, but the plotters were invariably
discovered and brought to justice; while every attempt at open
insurrection was stamped out with the utmost ease. To the Royalist
malcontents were added the extreme fanatics, the ultra-reformers of
every type—religious, political, and social. These were, at the time,
more dangerous than the Royalists, for they numbered supporters in the
army, including some who had been prominent friends of Cromwell up to
this time, like General Harrison. It was necessary, therefore, to arrest
some of the most turbulent agitators, including preachers, and to
deprive certain officers of their commissions.
The Protector and his Council acted wisely in their ordinances,
redressing in practical shape many grievances. The Barebones Parliament
had striven to abolish the Court of Chancery outright, and to hand its
power over to the judges of the Common Law, which would merely have
aggravated the existing hardships by checking the growth of the
principle of equity. Oliver acted more conservatively: in fact,
altogether too conservatively; but still he did something. In the Church
government, also, a good deal was accomplished by the appointment of
commissioners of good character to supervise the ministers, while
allowing each to organize his congregation on any lines he
chose—Presbyterian, Congregationalist, or Baptist. Dissenters were
permitted to form separate congregations—“gathered churches” in the
phrase of the day—if they so desired. Of course, this was not by any
means complete religious toleration, but it was a nearer approach to it
than any government in Europe, with the possible exception of the Dutch,
had yet sanctioned, and it was so far in advance of the general spirit
of the time that the new Parliament—a really representative body—took
sharp exception to it. In point of religious toleration Oliver went just
as far as the people of his day would let him—farther than any other
ruler of the century was willing to go, save only Henry IV. of
France—and Henry IV. really believed in nothing, and so could easily be
tolerant, while Cromwell’s zealous faith was part of the very marrow of
his being.
[Illustration:
The Clock Tower, Hampton Court.
]