and with it of the episcopal church as the state church. Among these republican chiefs, however, Cromwell, the independent, developed infinitely the most capacity for command and for government; and from the difficulties of his situation, surrounded by the conflicting parties of royalist presbyterians, who would suppress his free notions of religious government, and a mass of ultra republicans and religious zealots who went far beyond him, he was compelled to seize the entire reins of rule, and the commonwealth became a dictatorship. Had these violently opposing elements not existed to the extent which they did, England might then have "become and remained a pure republic, governed by its president and its parliament, or the descendants of Cromwell might have been to-day seated on the throne of England. But the same predominating impulses which deprived Cromwell of the power of riding by a free parliament, and compelled him to remain a dictator, equally foreshowed the inevitable termination of the prevalence of his principles of government with his life. The chaos of parties, political and religious, which raged around him, was certain, as it immediately did, to destroy itself, and leave open the way for monarchy and episcopacy.
We have, therefore, here only to consider what was the nature of Cromwell's dictatorship, and what its effects present and parliament. And in the first place we must admit that after all necessary concession to the charges against Cromwell of personal ambition, and of his having terminated all his professed struggles for liberty and constitutional right by seizing the helm of government himself, and ruling according to his own will, there is no other instance of military conquerors who have used their power so entirely for the public benefit, and so little to the restraint of individual freedom. His rule, though centring in himself, was not for himself, but for the people; it was not one of absolutism or oppression, but of cordial and earnest endeavour for the general welfare, and embraced the greatest freedom that had ever yet existed in England.
As the career of a mere country gentleman, scarcely raised above the condition of a gentleman farmer, and till upwards of thirty years of age distinguished for nothing but his retiring life and religious habits, and till forty-three ignorant of military command—'twas marvellous. Julius Caesar, to whom he has been compared, was educated as a great patrician, was practised in all the arts, and possessed of all the influence by which men distinguish themselves in the chief arena of a nation. He was a splendid orator, and an accomplished and experienced general; and when he seized on the dictatorship of his country, it was to repress liberty, and hold his station for his own glory by a rigorous and military repression. But though Cromwell had everything of the military science to learn when called upon to command, he soon showed that he had the genius and the conquering will. Every enemy, king, baron, and cavalier, whose profession was naturally of arms, fell or fled before him; and Marston Moor, Naseby, Dunbar, and Worcester, spread his fame as an invincible hero through the whole world. When he arrived at the chief power, he extended and confirmed this fame. He beat down the haughty insolence of the Dutch at sea, impressed France with the terror of his arms, and inflicted a terrible chastisement on Spain, which had so often sent her armadas against protestant England, and stirred up all the catholic animus on the continent against her. He made pope and pagan tremble, taught Savoy to respect the rights of conscience, and Algiers the rights of merchants; he did that in Scotland which no English monarch could ever accomplish before him, not even om- great martial Edwards and Henrys—he thoroughly subdued the hardy valour of the Scots, and kept that country in peaceful subjection till his death.
When he came to administer the civil government he would fain have given parliament the most perfect freedom, if it would only have consented to leave his own position unassailed. Even as it was, he permitted the most uninfringed personal liberty; and as to religion, there never had been so much freedom of conscience enjoyed since the Conquest. Though himself an independent, he permitted presbyterians or other professors to hold livings in the church, so that they preached sound doctrine, and maintained a religious life. He took immense pains by his commissioners to purge the ministry of corrupt, unsound, and inefficient preachers, and to introduce better men, without regard to the particular sect to which they belonged. If we compare the commonwealth, in respect to either civil or religious liberty, with the monarchy under the Tudors and the Stuarts, and what it became again after the restoration, the change is wonderful. Instead of burnings, brandings, cutting off of ears, slitting of noses, the torturings, fleecings, and insolent oppressions and cruelties of the Star-chamber and High Commission Court, the change might well be termed like one from hell to heaven. In all Cromwell's addresses to parliament, he urged on them the necessity of bringing the truth and purity of Christianity into the daily practice of fife and government, and his own court was in perfect keeping with his inculcations. There everything was orderly, decorous, and dignified. No scandalous libertines could find countenance there. He exhibited the same honest and patriotic spirit in sweeping away the corruptions of the law and the corruptions of the bench. His reform of the hideous court of chancery, and his appointment of upright judges, astonished the whole country; and such was the general vigour of both his foreign and domestic administration of affairs, that his very enemies, as we have seen, were compelled to express their admiration, and to name the days of his government "halcyon days," and to confess that the name of England never stood so high in the world.
Such were the effects of Cromwell's ride for the time; and the only remaining question is, what have been its permanent effects on the welfare of this country, and on history at large? It would be difficult to estimate the extent of the beneficial influence of the English commonwealth on general liberty and civilisation. The solemn and striking example of a nation calling its monarch to account for his attempts to destroy the liberties of his country, condemning and executing him for his treason to the state, was a lesson to all monarchs and all subjects, that will never be forgotten whilst the world stands, and has been already imitated in France. The very enormity of the military force by which Europe at present is held in slavery, is but a confession of the consciousness that the principles of the British common-
