Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847. Various
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the conduct of the several agents in them. Cromwell, in the position in which he stood, as an honest man and a patriot, should have done his best for the establishment of the Commonwealth; and this he did not. We are far, as we have said, from venturing to give a decisive opinion on the probability (with the united efforts of the victorious general and the Parliament) of forming a republic. But we are not disposed to think that the cause was hopeless. Had the Parliament been allowed to recruit its numbers without dissolving itself—the measure which it constantly desired, and which Cromwell would not hear of, though, without a doubt, it was the very line of conduct which his own practical sagacity would have led him to, if his heart had been in the business—the minds of men would have had time to settle and reflect, and a mode of government, which had already existed for some years, might have been adopted by the general consent.
We look upon the Restoration very calmly, very satisfactorily, for whom a second revolution has placed another dynasty upon the throne, governing upon principles quite different from those which were rooted in the Stuarts. We see the Restoration, with the Revolution of 1688 at its back, and almost consider them as one event. But a most loyal and contented subject of Queen Victoria, would have been a Commonwealthsman in those days. How could it then have been foreseen that all the power, and privilege, and splendour of royalty, should exist only to protect the law, to secure the equal rights of all—that monarchy, retaining a traditionary awe and majesty derived from remote times, should remain amongst us to supply to a representative government that powerful, constant, and impartial executive which, from the mere elements of a republic, it is so difficult to extract? Who could have imagined that a popular legislature, and the supremacy of the law, could have been so fortunately combined and secured under the shadow of the monarchy? Enlightened minds at that time could not have looked calmly towards a Restoration; they probably thought, or would have been led to think, that, in the position they then were, it was better to take the constitution of Holland, than the government of France, for their model.
But the multitude—with what enthusiasm they welcomed the restoration of the Stuarts! Very true. But the Protectorate was no antagonist to monarchy. Republican pride was never called forth to contend in the public mind against the feeling of loyalty, and an attachment to kings. The Protectorate was itself a monarchy without its splendour, or the prestige of hereditary greatness. It was a monarchy under the Geneva gown. Was it likely that the populace would accept of this in lieu of the crowned and jewelled royalty which was wont to fill its imagination?
However, the experiment—fortunately for us, as the result has turned out—was never destined to be made. Cromwell dissolved the Long Parliament. He now stood alone, he and the army, the sole power in the state. His first measure, that of sending a summons in his own name, to persons of his own choice, and thus, without any popular election whatever, assembling what is called the Little Parliament, or Barebones Parliament, shows a singular audacity, and proves how little trammelled he was himself by traditionary or constitutional maxims. He who would not allow the Long Parliament to recruit its numbers, and thus escape the perils of a free election of an altogether new assembly, extricates himself from the same embarrassment by electing the whole Parliament himself. Some historians have represented this measure as having for its very object to create additional confusion, and render himself, and his own dictatorial power, more necessary to the state. It has not appeared to us in this light. We see in it a bold but rude assay at government. In this off-hand manner of constituting a Parliament, we detect the mingled daring of the Puritan and the Soldier. In neither of these characters was he likely to have much respect for legal maxims, or rules of merely human contrivance. Cromwell was educating himself for the Statesman: at this juncture it is the Puritan General that we have before us.
The Little Parliament having blundered on till it had got itself entangled in the Mosaic dispensation, resigned its power into the hands of him who had bestowed it. Thereupon a new Instrument of Government is framed, with the advice of the council of officers, appointing Cromwell Protector, and providing for the election of a Parliament.
This Parliament being elected, falls, of course, on the discussion of this very Instrument of government. Henceforth Cromwell's great difficulty is the management of his Parliaments. The speeches he delivered to them at various times, and which occupy the third volume of the work before us, are of high historical interest. They are in every respect superior to his letters. Neither will their perusal be found to be of that arduous and painful nature which, from the reputation they have had, most persons will be disposed to expect. The sermon may weary, but the speech is always fraught with meaning; and the mixture of sermon and speech together, portray the man with singular distinctness. We see the Puritan divine, the Puritan soldier, becoming the Puritan statesman. His originally powerful mind is excited to fresh exertion by his onerous and exalted position. But he is still constant to himself. Very interesting is the exhibition presented to us of this powerful intellect, breaking out in flashes of strong sense, and relapsing again into the puerilities of the sect. But as it falls upon the strong sense to act, and on the puerilities only to preach, the man comes out, upon the whole, as a great and able governor.
The reputation which Oliver's speeches have borne, as being involved, spiritless, tortuous, and even purposely confused, has resulted, we think, from this—that an opinion of the whole has been formed from an examination of a few, and chiefly of those which were delivered on the occasion of his refusing the offered title of king. His conduct on this occasion, it would be necessary for an historian particularly to investigate, and in the discharge of this duty he would have to peruse a series of discourses undoubtedly of a very bewildering character. They are the only speeches of Cromwell of which it can be said that their meaning is not clearly, and even forcibly expressed. And in this case it is quite evident, that he had no distinct meaning to express; he had no definite answer to give the Parliament who were petitioning him to take the title of king. He was anxious to gain time—he was talking against time—an art which we moderns only have thoroughly mastered. How could Cromwell, who was no great rhetorician, be otherwise than palpably confused, and dubious and intricate? Nothing can be clearer than that he himself leant towards the opinion of the Parliament, that it would be good policy to adopt the royal title. It was so connected with the old attachments and associations of Englishmen, it had so long given force to the language of the law, its claims were so much better known, its prerogatives so much better understood than those of the new title of Protector, that the resumption of it must have appeared very advisable. But the army had been all along fighting against the King. Whilst to the lawyer and the citizen the title was still the most honourable and ever to be venerated, to the soldier of the Commonwealth it had become a term of reproach, of execration, of unsparing hostility. Oliver Cromwell might well hesitate before assuming a title which might forfeit for him the allegiance of a great portion of the army. He deferred his answer, to have an opportunity for estimating the nature and amount of the resistance he might expect from that quarter; and he came to the conclusion, that the risk of unsettling the affections of the army was not to be incurred for either any personal gratification to himself (which we take to have not weighed much with him) in assuming the title of king, or for the advantages which might accrue from it in the ultimate settlement of the nation. His addresses, therefore, to the Parliament on this occasion not being definite answers to the Parliament, nor intended to be such, but mere postponements of his answer, were necessarily distinguished by indecision, uncertainty, and all sorts of obscurities. But, these excepted, his speeches, however deficient in what pertains to the art of composition, in terseness, or method, or elegance of phrase, are never wanting in the great essentials—the expression of his meaning in a very earnest and forcible manner. The mixture of sermon and speech, we allow, is not inviting; but the sermon is just as clear, perhaps, as any which the chaplain of the House would have preached to them, and it must be remembered, that to explain his meaning, his political sentiments, the sermon was as necessary as the speech.
By the new instrument of government, the Protector, with his council, was authorised, in the interval before the meeting of Parliament, to issue such ordinances as might be deemed necessary. This interval our Puritan governor very consistently employed, first of all, in establishing a gospel ministry throughout the nation. Thirty-eight chosen men, "the acknowledged flower of English Puritanism," were nominated a Supreme Commission, for the trial of public preachers. Any person holding a church-living, or pretending to the tithes or