There are emergencies when an ounce of decision is worth a pound of
deliberation. When the ship is foundering or on fire, or when the
crew have mutinied, it will not avail to sit in the cabin and discuss
how it happened. Something must be done, and that promptly. Cromwell
was the man for such a juncture. He saw clearly that if the country
was to be kept together, it must be by decided measures, which no
precedent, law, or constitution justified, but which stood justified
none the less by exigencies of the crisis, by his own conscious
rectitude of purpose, and by the result.
If there is any truth in Napoleon's maxim, that "The tools belong to
him that can use them," then Cromwell had a God-given right to rule;
for, first, he had the ability; and, next, though he used his power in
his campaign in Ireland (S453) with merciless severity, yet the great
purpose of his life was to establish order and justice on what seemed
to him the only practical basis.