"It hath been not only your endeavour to pervert the army while
you have been sitting, and to draw them to state the question
about a 'Commonwealth;' but some of you have been listing of
persons, by commission of Charles Stuart, to join with any
insurrection that may be made. And what is like to come upon
this, the enemy being ready to invade us, but even present
blood and confusion? And if this be so, I do assign it to this
cause--your not assenting to what you did invite me to by your
petition and advice, as that which might prove the settlement
of the nation. And if this be the end of your sitting, and this
be your carriage, I think it high time that an end be put to
your sitting. And I do dissolve this Parliament! And let God be
judge between you and me!"
It is at this latter period of his career that the character of
Cromwell, to our apprehension, stands out to greatest advantage, becomes
more grave, and solemn, and estimable. Other dictators, other men of
ambitious aims and fortunes, show themselves, for the most part, less
amiable, more tyrannous than ever, more violent and selfish, when they
have obtained the last reward of all their striving, and possessed
themselves of the seat of power. It was otherwise with Cromwell. He
became more moderate, his views more expanded, his temper milder and
more pensive. The stormy passions of the civil war were overblown, the
intricate and ambiguous passages of his political course had been left
behind; and _now_, whatever may have been the errors of the past, and
however his own ambition or rashness may have led him to it, he occupied
a position which he might say with truth he held for his country's good.
Forsake it he could not. Repose in it he could not. A man of religious
breeding, of strong conscientiousness, though tainted with superstition,
he could not but feel the great responsibility of that position. A
vulgar usurper is found at this era of his career to sink into the
voluptuary, or else to vent his dissatisfied humour in acts of cruelty
and oppression. Cromwell must govern, and govern to his best. The
restless and ardent spirit that had ever prompted him onwards and
upwards, and which had carried him to that high place, was now upon the
wane. It had borne him to that giddy pinnacle, and threatened to leave
him there. Men were now aiming at his life; the assassin was abroad;
one-half the world was execrating him; we doubt not that he spoke with
sincerity when he said, that "he would gladly live under any woodside,
and keep a flock of sheep." He would gladly lay down his burden, but he
cannot; can lay it down only in the grave. The sere and yellow leaf is
falling on the shelterless head of the royal Puritan. The asperity of
his earlier character is gone, the acrimony of many of his prejudices
has, in his long and wide intercourse with mankind, abated; his great
duties have taught him moderation of many kinds; there remains of the
fiery sectarian, who so hastily "turned the buckle of his girdle behind
him," little more than his firmness and conscientiousness: his firmness
that, as he truly said, "could be bold with men;" his conscientiousness,
which made the power he attained by that boldness, a burden and a heavy
responsibility.
"We have not been now four years and upwards in this government," says
the Protector, in one of his speeches, "to be totally ignorant of what
things may be of the greatest concernment to us." No; this man has not
been an idle scholar. Since the Lord General took the reins of civil
government, and became Lord Protector, he has thought and learned much
of statemanship. But as a statesman, he is still first of all the
Puritan. It is worth while to observe how his foreign policy, which has
been justly admired, took its turn and direction from his religious
feelings. He made alliances with the Protestant powers of the north, and
assumed a firm attitude of hostility towards Spain--and reasons of state
may have had some sway in determining him to these measures; but his
great motive for hostility with Spain was, that she stood "at the head
of the antichristian interest"--"was described in the Scriptures to be
papal and antichristian."
"Why, truly your great enemy is the Spaniard. He is a natural enemy. He
is naturally so throughout, by reason of that enmity that is in him
against whatever is of God.... Your enemy, as I tell you, naturally, by
that antipathy which is in him,--and also providentially, (that is, by
special ordering of Providence.) An enmity is put in him by God. 'I will
put an enmity between thy seed and her seed,' which goes but for little
among statesmen, but is more considerable than all things. And he that
considers not such natural enmity, the _providential_ enmity as well as
the _accidental_, I think he is not well acquainted with the Scripture,
and the things of God,"--(_Speech_ 5.)
In fine, we see in Cromwell, every where and throughout, the genuine,
fervid Puritan--the Puritan general, the Puritan statesman. He was a
man, and, therefore, doubtless ambitious; he rose through a scene of
civil as well as military contest, and, doubtless, was not unacquainted
with dissimulation; but if we would describe him briefly, it is as the
GREAT PURITAN that he must, ever be remembered in history.
In parting company with the editor of these letters and speeches, we
feel that we have not done justice to the editorial industry and
research which these volumes display. Our space would not permit it. For
the same reason we have been unable to quote several instances of vivid
narrative, which we had hoped to transfer to our own pages. And as to
our main quarrel with him--this outrageous adoption of Puritanical bile
and superstition,--we have been haunted all along by a suspicion we have
occasionally expressed, that the man _cannot_ be in earnest. He could
not have been so abandoned by his common sense. He has been so
accustomed to mingle sport, and buffoonery, and all sorts of wilful
extravagance, with his most serious mood, that he perhaps does not know
himself when, and how far, he is in earnest. In turning over the leaves
of his work, we light, towards the end of the second volume, upon the
following passage, which may, _perhaps_, explain the temper of the
writer, when he is abetting and encouraging his fanatical heroes. He is
uttering some sarcasms upon the poor "art of speech."
"Is there no sacredness, then, any longer in the miraculous tongue of
man? Is his head become a wretched cracked pitcher, on which you jingle
to frighten crows, and makes bees hive? He fills me with terror, this
two-legged rhetorical phantasm! I could long for an Oliver without
rhetoric at all. I could long for a Mahomet, whose persuasive eloquence,
with wild-flashing heart and scimiter, is, 'Wretched moral, give up
that; or by the Eternal, thy maker and mine, I will kill thee! Thou
blasphemous scandalous misbirth of Nature, is not even _that_ the
kindest thing I can do for thee, if thou repent not, and alter in the
name of Allah?'"
To this sort of satirical humour--to "the truth of a song,"--not
Dryasdust himself would call upon him to swear. And may not all his
rhapsodies upon his "sword-in-hand" Puritans be little more than an
amplification of this one passage? And, if we insist upon it, that a
reform by the pen, or even by speech-making, is better than one by pike
and musket--if we should suggest that matters of civil government are
better decided by civil and political reasoning than by metaphorical
texts of Scripture, interpreted by prejudice and passion--if we contend
for such truisms as these, shall we not be in danger of occupying some
such position as the worthy prelate whose sagacity led him to discover
that _some facts_ in Gulliver's Travels had surely been overcharged?