chief magistrate—not an imitation of a king—and must possess no power of vetoing the laws which the representatives of the people agreed upon (Burton, Diary, iii. 171, 318, 337). On the same ground he opposed any concession of a negative voice in legislation to the ‘other House,’ or any recognition of the authority of the new lords (ib. iv. 70, 292). Vane spoke with equal vigour against the admission of the members for Scotland and Ireland, allowing in the first case the validity of the act of union, but denying that of the arrangements for Scotland's representation in parliament made by the Protector. Ireland, he argued, was still a province, and it was inequitable to give it a power not only to make laws for itself, but to give perhaps a casting vote in making laws for England (ib. iv. 178, 229). Vane also attacked the foreign policy of the protectorate as calculated to promote the personal interests of the Protector rather than those of the nation (ib. iii. 384, 401, 489), and demanded the release of fifth-monarchy men and cavaliers arrested without legal warrant (ib. iii. 495, iv. 120, 262).
These speeches, logical, acute, and at times eloquent, give a much higher idea of Vane's powers than the formal orations published in the early days of the Long parliament. But his faith in his cause blinded him to the risk that the overthrow of the protectorate might produce the restoration of the Stuarts. When a supporter of the government talked of ‘consequences,’ he answered, ‘God is Almighty: will you not trust Him with the consequences? He is a wiser workman than to reject His own work’ (ib. iv. 72). This ‘blind zeal,’ as the royalists termed it, led him to sanction Ludlow's intrigues with the discontented officers of the army, and to ally himself with them to restore the Long parliament and set aside the Protector (ib. iv. 457; Ludlow, ii. 65, 74). On the restoration of the Long parliament, Vane was at once appointed a member of the committee of safety (7 May) and of the council of state which succeeded it (14 May). He was also made a commissioner of the navy, a member of the committee of examination and secrecy, and one of a special committee appointed to examine into the case of prisoners for conscience' sake (Commons' Journals, vii. 646, 648, 654, 665; cf. Trial of Vane, p. 47). The management of foreign affairs was almost entirely in his hands, and to Bordeaux, the French ambassador, he seemed ‘the principal minister in the present government.’ Under his influence the foreign policy of the republic was prudent and moderate. ‘Vane at his last visit,’ wrote Bordeaux in July 1659, ‘made no mystery with me; he assured me that the sole desire of this government is to live on good terms with all neighbouring states, and to consolidate their internal affairs’ (Guizot, Richard Cromwell and the Restoration, i. 381, 411, 424, 433, 437, 443, 483; Commons' Journals, vii. 652, 670). In finance Vane was also active, having been added by a special vote to the treasury committee (ib. vii. 648, 737; cf. Guizot, i. 154). Hitherto he had had little to do with the management of the army, but on 13 May he was appointed one of the seven commissioners for the nomination of officers, who were charged to replace Cromwellian officers by sound republicans. His position was that of a mediator between the army and the parliament. Like Ludlow, he opposed the restrictions which Haslerig and the majority of the parliament inserted in the commissions of the officers (Ludlow, ii. 89, 103; Thurloe, vii. 704). He tried also to reconcile Haslerig and Lambert, and it was mainly owing to his efforts that Lambert was made commander of the army sent to suppress the rising under Sir George Booth (Ludlow, ii. 112; cf. Carte, Original Letters, ii. 200). On 10 Aug. 1659, during the excitement which that rising caused, Vane himself was chosen to command one of the regiments of volunteers raised in London, a circumstance which was one of the charges against him three years later (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1659–60, pp. 94, 563, 582; Trial, pp. 29, 33, 49). Vane's endeavours to conciliate the army, his apparent alliance with Lambert, and his opposition to the proposed engagement against government by a single person, though each defensible enough on public grounds, exposed him to great suspicions. He was believed to be plotting either to establish the fifth monarchy and the reign of the saints, or to set up a government in which he and Lambert would divide the power (ib. iii. 505; Guizot, ii. 424, 426, 483, 490; Carte, Original Letters, ii. 200, 216, 225).
On 13 Oct. 1659 Lambert turned out the Long parliament. The officers in London, regarding Vane as their friend, appointed him one of their committee of safety (26 Oct.) and one of the six commissioners for the nomination of officers. He refused to accept either post, but continued to act as a commissioner of the admiralty under the government they set up. At his trial he defended himself by saying that though his position with regard to the navy brought him into contact with the members of the committee of safety, ‘yet I kept myself disinterested from all those actings of the army, as to any consent or approbation of mine (however in
