"Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloudNot of war only, but detractions rude,Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed,And on the neck of crowned Fortune proudHast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued,While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued,And Dunbar field resound thy praises loud,And Worcester's laureate wreath: yet much remainsTo conquer still; Peace hath her victoriesNo less renowned than War: new foes ariseThreatening to bind our souls with secular chains,Help us to save free conscience from the pawOf hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw."
"Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloudNot of war only, but detractions rude,Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed,And on the neck of crowned Fortune proudHast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued,While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued,And Dunbar field resound thy praises loud,And Worcester's laureate wreath: yet much remainsTo conquer still; Peace hath her victoriesNo less renowned than War: new foes ariseThreatening to bind our souls with secular chains,Help us to save free conscience from the pawOf hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw."
"Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloudNot of war only, but detractions rude,Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed,And on the neck of crowned Fortune proudHast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued,While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued,And Dunbar field resound thy praises loud,And Worcester's laureate wreath: yet much remainsTo conquer still; Peace hath her victoriesNo less renowned than War: new foes ariseThreatening to bind our souls with secular chains,Help us to save free conscience from the pawOf hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw."
Though Milton, in his unpractical idealism, was for discontinuing all public support to the clergy, whilst Cromwell, so far as we can judge, was merely for substituting some other mode of payment for the unequal burden of the tithe as it was levied in those days, they concurred on the point of extending religious liberty to the uttermost, and in this Cromwell had the army behind him. For the moment, however, the decision was postponed, as the Commonwealth had become involved in a war which occupied the thoughts of its rulers.
In the Dutch war, which broke out in 1652, neither Cromwell nor his brother officers had much part. Ever since the beginning of the Commonwealth a maritime war with France had virtually existed under the pretext of reprisals for injury done by French ships toEnglish trade. The seizure of French goods in Dutch vessels had irritated the Netherlanders, and the Navigation Act passed in 1651 had taken away much of the trade done by them in English ports. In May, 1652, Tromp, the great Dutch admiral, had been sent out with orders to resist the right of search, and on approaching an English fleet commanded by Blake, he had neglected to lower his flag, as required by English commanders in satisfaction of their claim to enforce the Sovereignty over the British Seas, a claim which the Commonwealth had received from the Monarchy. An action resulting brought on war between the two peoples. In this war, neither Cromwell nor the army sympathised. Holding as they did that the force of England, if used at all, should be used for the advantage of Protestantism, they disliked a war waged against a Protestant nation. On the other hand they had no wish to see the English navy playing a craven part; and believing that Tromp had kept his flag flying as a studied insult, they offered no direct opposition to the war. Yet, as long as it was in progress, whenever any overture likely to lead to peace was made, it was sure to have the support of Cromwell and the officers.
If the Commonwealth leaders were immersed in preparations for war, the officers of the army had not forgotten their demand for reforms in Church and State, and in contemplating the slackness of Parliamentwith regard to these reforms, their minds were again set on a dissolution of Parliament at a time far earlier than that which had been fixed by the House itself. Towards the end of July the Army Council—now composed of officers alone—had considered a petition to be addressed to Parliament, and had asked 'that a new representative be forthwith elected'. When the petition was finally submitted to Parliament, this clause had given place to another merely requesting Parliament to consider of some qualifications which would secure 'the election only of such as are pious and faithful in the interests of the Commonwealth to sit and serve as members in the said Parliament,' in this way shifting from a demand for a dissolution to be followed by a general election, to a demand for partial elections to fill up existing vacancies. Though no direct evidence exists, there are strong reasons for believing that this substitution was made in consequence of Cromwell's intervention. Even then he did not append his signature to the petition.
It was as a mediator—not as a partisan—that Cromwell bore himself at the time when the army—after an interval of more than two years and a half—once more began to put pressure on Parliament. On the one hand Parliament was not only discredited by its inability to undertake the reforms demanded, but still more by the widely spread belief that many of its members had made full use of their opportunities tofeather their own nests. On the other hand, this discredited House, though, mutilated as it was, it had scarcely a semblance of constitutional right, was yet the only body remaining in existence to which even a semblance appertained. Cromwell might not be an authority on constitutional law, but he had an instinctive apprehension for the truth on which all constitutional law is based—that the first thing necessary in the institutions of any country is not that they shall be theoretically defensible, but that they should meet with general acceptance. Those who like ourselves can look back on that stirring time from the safe vantage ground which we occupy, can see that, so far as constitutional questions were concerned, the work of the men of the seventeenth century was to substitute Parliament for the Crown as the basis of authority, and we have, accordingly, considerable difficulty in placing ourselves in the position of those to whom only part of the drama had been unrolled. In 1652, at least, it was impossible to appeal to the truncated Parliament as in any way representing the nation. Yet how was it possible to base authority on any new Parliament which should even approximate to such a representation? Except with extreme theorists there was no desire to evoke such a spectre. Already in 1650 Vane, speaking on behalf of the Parliamentary majority, had advocated a scheme of partial elections which left the members in possessionof their seats, and the army leaders now proposed to substitute for this a general election modified by qualifications which would exclude all men of Royalist proclivities. The question at this time dividing Parliament and Army was therefore merely the choice of the best means of controlling the national verdict. The plan on either side might be one that men might reasonably adopt according to different points of view. Neither was likely to excite enthusiasm or to be generally accepted as a new basis of authority round which the nation could be expected to rally. There is no reason to suppose that Cromwell had anything better to propose, and it is certain that the theory, accepted at the present day, that it is better to allow a nation to learn by experience of misfortune than to force it, even to its own benefit, in a given direction, had no supporters in 1652, and least of all was it likely to find an advocate in Cromwell.
Cromwell had the strongest faith in the virtue of conferences at which such problems could be threshed out by men of good-will separated only by intellectual differences. It had been by an appeal to a committee that he had surmounted the difficulties which had faced him when the Levellers, in 1647, called prematurely for the trial of the King. He now, in October, 1652, secured the meeting of a conference between the leading members of Parliament and the principal officers. "I believe," he afterwards declared, "wehad at least ten or twelve meetings, most humbly begging and beseeching of them that by their own means they would bring forth those good things which had been promised and expected; that so it might appear they did not do them by any suggestion from the army, but from their own ingenuity, so tender were we to preserve them in the reputation of the people." Vane and Bradshaw, and even, politically speaking, Henry Marten, the champions of the existing Parliament, were men of the highest character, and were justly apprehensive of giving way either to a military dictatorship, or to a Royalist reaction. Cromwell, on the other hand, had his eye increasingly fixed on the immediate evils of the present system. "How hard and difficult a matter was it," he complained at a somewhat later date, "to get anything carried without making parties, without things unworthy of a Parliament." In November he opened his mind to Whitelocke. "As for members of Parliament," he said, "the army begins to have a strange distaste against them, and I wish there were not too much cause for it; and really their pride and ambition, and their self-seeking, engrossing all places of honour and profit to themselves and their friends, and their daily breaking forth into new and violent parties and factions; their delay of business and design to perpetuate themselves and to continue the power in their own hands; their meddling in private mattersbetween party and party contrary to the institution of Parliament, their injustice and partiality in those matters, and the scandalous lives of some of the chief of them; these things, my lord, do give much ground for people to open their mouths against them and to dislike them; nor can they be kept within the bounds of justice and law or reason, they themselves being the supreme power of the nation, liable to no account of any, nor to be controlled or regulated by any other power; there being none superior or co-ordinate with them." Cromwell was evidently harking back to his proposal for mixing something of monarchy with the existing institutions. "Unless," he continued, "there be some authority and power so full and so high as to restrain and keep things in better order, and that may be a check to these exorbitances, it will be impossible in human reason to prevent our ruin." To Whitelocke's constitutional objections he replied sharply: "What if a man should take upon him to be a King?" Whitelocke replied that it would be better to recall Charles II. Cromwell's utterance was plainly unpremeditated, and may be taken as a sign that the idea of his own elevation was, even at this early date, present in his mind, at least as a possibility, though it was far from having as yet crystallised itself into a settled design.
It was no restoration of kingship, but the speedy choice of a new Parliament that was in the thoughtsof Cromwell's subordinates. In January, 1653, a circular was sent by them to the regiments, asking the soldiers, as well as the officers, to approve of a petition for 'successive Parliaments consisting of men faithful to the interests of the Commonwealth, men of truth, fearing God and hating covetousness,' as well as for law reform and liberty of conscience. For some time it seemed as if Parliament would consent to hasten its own dissolution. In March, however, though a bill for new elections was considered, the pace slackened, and the hopes of the army again fell. In the army, indeed, there was far from being complete unanimity. A party headed by Lambert would have been content with a new Parliament from which members hostile to the Commonwealth were excluded, whilst the perfervid Harrison advocated the principles of the Fifth Monarchy, and asked that the government should be entrusted to moral and religious men, without recourse to popular election. Both Lambert and Harrison concurred in urging Cromwell to proceed to a forcible dissolution. Cromwell hesitated long. "I am pushed on," he complained, "by two parties to do that, the consideration of the issue whereof makes my hair stand on end."
If only Parliament could have been induced to clear the way for its successor on the terms proposed by the army, Cromwell would have been the first to rejoice. In the early part of April he was still preparedto stand by Parliament if it would proceed in earnest with the Bill for the new elections. Yet on the 6th, one of the days appointed for its consideration, the Bill was quietly passed over. By degrees it came out that the Bill, when completed, would be one authorising Vane's pet scheme of partial elections, the old members not only retaining their seats but forming an election committee with power to exclude any member whose presence was distasteful to them. There are even reasons to believe that it was intended that this arrangement should be a permanent one, and that each successive Parliament should have the right of shedding such members as were not to its taste. Moreover, as soon as the Bill was passed, Parliament was to adjourn till November, that it might be out of its power to repeal or amend the act under military pressure.
Such an arrangement must have irritated Cromwell to the uttermost. On April 15, having been absent from Parliament for a month, he returned to his place to plead against it. "It is high time," was the answer vouchsafed by one of the leading personages to his pleading for a new Parliament, "to choose a new general." Cromwell, in reply, offered his resignation, but as no officer could be found to take his place, the demand for it was soon dropped. Still anxious for a compromise, he made a fresh proposal. Why should not the difficulty be got over by a temporary suspensionof the Parliamentary system, and a body of right-thinking men appointed to take into consideration the necessities of the time, and to prepare the way for its re-establishment. This proposal was taken into consideration at a meeting of officers and Parliamentarians on the 19th, but, as might have been expected, it provoked opposition and, after a sitting prolonged far into the night, the conference broke up on an undertaking given, as it would seem, by Vane, that the members of the House who were present would do their best to hinder the progress of the Bill on the following morning.
When the morning arrived, the House, taking the bit between its teeth, threw aside the engagements of its leaders and insisted on proceeding with the Bill. To the pecuniary interests of the Parliamentary rank and file it was far more important to escape the necessity of facing their constituents than it was to such men as Vane or Bradshaw, who would almost certainly be re-elected in any case. Yet it has never been alleged that either Vane or Bradshaw took steps to persuade the excited House to act in conformity with the promise given the evening before. Harrison at once despatched a message to Cromwell to warn him of the danger, and Cromwell evidently regarded the action of the members as a clear breach of faith on the part of Vane. Hurrying to the House, without giving himself time to change the plain black clothesand the grey worsted stockings which appear to have been considered unsuitable to a member in his place in Parliament, he sat for a while in silence. When the Speaker put the question that 'this Bill do pass,' he rose to speak. Dwelling at first on the pains and care of the public good which had characterised the early days of the Long Parliament, he proceeded to blame the members for their later misconduct, holding up to scorn 'their injustice, delays of justice, self-interest, and other faults ... charging them not to have a heart to do anything for public good,' and to have 'espoused the corrupt interest of Presbytery and lawyers who were the supporters of tyranny and oppression'. Their last crime was the present attempt to perpetuate themselves in power. "Perhaps," he continued, his wrath growing upon him as he spoke, "you think this is not Parliamentary language. I confess it is not, neither are you to expect any such from me." Then striding up and down the floor of the House, he pointed to individual members, charging them with corruption or immorality. "It is not fit," he added, "that you should sit as a Parliament any longer. You have sat long enough, unless you had done more good." Then, upon a remonstrance from Sir Peter Wentworth, he took the final step. "Come, come!" he cried, "I will put an end to your prating. You are no Parliament. I say you are no Parliament. I will put an end to your sitting." Then turning toHarrison, he uttered the fateful words, "Call them in; call them in". The door was thrown open and thirty or forty musketeers tramped in. "This," exclaimed Vane, "is not honest, yea it is against morality and common honesty." It was to Vane's broken word that Cromwell, whether truly or falsely, attributed the necessity of acting as he was now doing. Doubtless with a touch of sadness in his voice, he addressed his old friend—his brother, as he had long styled him—with the veiled reproof: "Oh, Sir Henry Vane! Sir Henry Vane! The Lord deliver me from Sir Henry Vane!"
The hall of meeting was soon cleared. Harrison handed Speaker Lenthall down from the chair. Algernon Sidney had to be removed with some show of compulsion. Most of the members yielding to the inevitable trooped out without even this nominal resistance. "It's you," said Cromwell as they filed past him, "that have forced me to this, for I have sought the Lord night and day that He would rather slay me than put me upon the doing of this work." Glancing at the mace he asked "What shall we do with this bauble?" Ordering Captain Scott to remove it from the table, he bade him take it away. When all was over, carrying the Bill on Elections under his cloak, he returned to Whitehall. In the afternoon he dispersed—in like manner—the Council of State, assuring its members that they could sit no longer, theParliament having been dissolved. "Sir," replied Bradshaw, "we have heard what you did at the House in the morning, and before many hours all England will hear it; but, Sir, you are mistaken to think that the Parliament is dissolved; for no power under heaven can dissolve them but themselves; therefore take you notice of that."
As at the trial of the King, so in the ejection of Parliament, Cromwell had been thrown back on the employment of military force. Legality was clearly against him on both occasions. Yet it must not be forgotten that he was the last to concur in the employment of force; and that there was much to be said for his assertion that the sitting members were no Parliament. Reduced by the flight of Royalists to the King in 1642 and by Pride's Purge in 1648, they had, after an existence of twelve years and a half, little remaining to them of that representative character which is the very being of a Parliament. At all events, this time, at least, Cromwell was secure of popular favour. Not a single voice was raised in defence of the expelled members. In the evening some wag scrawled on the door of the Parliament House: "This House to be let unfurnished". The Parliament disappeared amidst general derision. For all that, the work before Cromwell was one of enormous—perhapseven of hopeless—difficulty. Without Parliament or King, the nation was thrown upon its own resources to reconstruct its institutions as best it might. It was inevitable that in such stress of storm it should hark back to the old paths, and should see no prospect of settled government, save in the restoration of the throne, or at least in the election of another Parliament. Yet this was the very thing that Cromwell and all who were associated with him most dreaded. It was but too probable that such a solution would sweep away not only Puritanism, but all hope of political reform. Everything for which the army had fought and for which the nation had suffered was at stake, and it was not in human nature—certainly not in Cromwell's nature—to make such a sacrifice without a struggle. That such a struggle could only be prolonged with the support of the army was self-evident. Cromwell, however, was the last of men to desire to establish a purely military government, and the army, to do it justice, was commanded by men who were, for the most part, desirous to support their general in the experiment of establishing a civil government which would have dispensed with the interference of military power. The tragedy—the glorious tragedy—of Cromwell's subsequent career lay in the impossibility of permanently checking the instincts of military politicians to intervene in favour of those guarantees regarded by them as indispensablefor the maintenance of the cause which they had so long upheld with all their might.
Distrust of the constituencies was the prominent feature of Cromwell's next move. The compromise offered by him of the temporary establishment of a non-elective body to prepare a basis of settlement whilst Parliamentary institutions remained in abeyance, was now adopted by the officers. Lambert,—who advocated a scheme for establishing a Council of State, apparently with provision for the increased independence of the executive, together with the election of a Parliament with restricted functions,—was unable to enforce his views. A small Council of State was established to carry on current affairs, but it was in the Council of Officers that the main question of the constitution was to be determined. Cromwell, after some hesitation, rallied to a very different scheme which had been suggested by Harrison, the brilliant soldier who dreaded to see the government in the hands of any but the Saints. Cromwell, however, whilst accepting Harrison's views on the whole, determined to modify them, in order to make the new assembly something more than a group of pious fanatics. He was consequently now anxious that it should include notable personages—even Fairfax was suggested—who had contended against the King, but who had no connection with the extreme sections of the community which found favour in Harrison's eyes.It was eventually resolved that the Council of Officers should invite nominations from the Congregational Churches in each county, reserving to itself the power of rejecting persons so named, and also of adding names which found no place on the list. On June 8 the persons finally selected received writs issued in the name of Cromwell as Lord General. An attempt had been made to secure the inclusion not only of Fairfax but of Vane, but neither of them would accept a place in the new assembly.
On July 4 the nominees of the army took their seats at Westminster. Cromwell, at all events, threw himself entirely into the spirit of the occasion. In a long speech he manifested his delight at seeing the government at last entrusted to the hands of the godly. No such authority, he proclaimed triumphantly, had ever before been entrusted to men on the ground that they owned God and were owned by Him. For once the emotional side of his nature had gained the upper hand over his practical common-sense. In long detail he told of the misconduct of the late Parliament, and repelled the idea that he had had any intention of substituting his own authority for that of the discarded House. It had been incumbent on him and his colleagues 'not to grasp at the power ourselves, or to keep it in military hands, no, not for a day, but, as far as God enabled us with strength and ability, to put it into the hands of proper personsthat might be called from the several parts of the nation'. "This necessity," he proceeded to aver; "and I hope we may say for ourselves, this integrity of concluding to divest the sword of all power in the civil administrations, hath been that that hath moved us to put you to this trouble." Then, enlarging on the providential character of the mission of the members of the new assembly, he urged them with many Scriptural quotations to take up their authority as men whom God had placed as rulers of the land. What, then, was to be said of that ideal of elected Parliaments, which had sunk so deeply into the minds of that generation? "If it were a time," he suggested, "to compare your standing with those that have been called by the suffrages of the people—which who can tell how soon God may fit the people for such a thing? None can desire it more than I! Would all were the Lord's people; as it was said, 'Would all the Lord's people were prophets': I would all were fit to be called." In time, indeed, this might be possible when the good and religious conduct of this assembly had won the people to the love of godliness. "Is not this the likeliest way to bring them to their liberties?" Finally, after much enforcement of the encouragements held forth by the Prophets and the Psalmists, he resigned all the power provisionally exercised by himself into the hands of his hearers, announcing to them that their power also was to beprovisional. They were to hold it only till November 3, 1654, and then to give place to a second assembly to be elected by themselves—an assembly which was to sit for no more than a year, in which time it was to make provision for the future government of the country.
Contrary, as it would seem, to the intention of those by whom it had been called, the new assembly audaciously assumed the name of Parliament. Its real position being that of a mere body of nominees, Lilburne was once more brought into the field. In 1649 Lilburne had been tried and acquitted, but had subsequently been banished by the Long Parliament, which had added to its sentence a declaration that he would be guilty of felony if he, at any time, returned to England. He now reappeared in London, where he was sent to prison, again tried, and again acquitted. The line taken by him and his followers was that the so-called Parliament now in existence was no Parliament at all, as it was not elected by the people. With Cromwell's full consent, Lilburne was retained in confinement, being ultimately removed to Jersey, where no writ of habeas corpus could deliver him.
For a time Lilburne's attack consolidated the alliance between the Lord General and the nominees to whom political power had been entrusted. Yet it was not long before Cromwell's practical sense took alarm at their proceedings. It was indeed notthe case, as has often been said, that the majority of the members were mere enthusiasts, but the enthusiasts settled down to Parliamentary work, seldom absenting themselves from the House, and being always ready to vote when a division was called; whilst those who distrusted them could not always be brought to a due sense of the importance of their Parliamentary duties, and were apt to be led away by interest or pleasure from supporting their opinions by their votes. Two questions were soon found to divide the parties, that of law reform, more especially the reform of Chancery, and that of a religious organisation other than compulsory uniformity under Bishops or Presbyters. On both these questions Cromwell was intensely interested, and there can be little doubt that if the nominated Parliament had conducted itself with due regard for practical exigencies, it would have retained his good-will to the end. Unfortunately this was not the case. It proposed a total abolition of the Court of Chancery, thus handing over to the hostile judges of the Common Law that system of equity which had been growing up with beneficial results for generations, whilst it also took in hand with a light heart the codification of the law, though not a single practising lawyer had a seat in the House, in the hope that 'the great volumes of law would come to be reduced into the bigness of a pocket book'. No wonder that Cromwell dropped into a friend's ear thewords: "I am more troubled now with the fool than with the knave". No wonder either that in September he drew aside from Harrison, under whose influence he had decided in favour of summoning the nominees, and that he listened with greater respect to Lambert, the military representative of constitutionalism and the determined opponent of political fanaticism.
Cromwell's position was rendered difficult by his association with this ill-starred assembly. On September 14 a broadside was scattered in the streets charging him with treason to 'his Lords the people of England,' not because he had broken up the miserable remnant of the Long Parliament, but because he had stood in the way of the election of a new House, and it is highly probable that a large number of people who had nothing to do with the distribution of broadsides shared in this opinion. Still greater was the danger of an appeal to the army, with which the writers concluded. It was known that many of the soldiers, and even of the officers, were restive under the suspension of popular elections, and it was found necessary to secure submission by cashiering Lieutenant-Colonel Joyce, who had formerly, as a cornet, carried off the King from Holmby House, and who now threw himself on the side of those who cried out for constitutional rights.
On the subject of Church organisation, Parliament was as subversive as on the subject of law reform,many of its members held with the Fifth Monarchy preachers, that the government of the State ought to be exclusively in the hands of the Saints, and, not unnaturally, concluded that they were themselves the Saints; thus taking a broad issue in defiance of the theory that the government ought to be administered or controlled by the elected representatives of the nation. The immediate dispute, however, turned on the unwillingness of the advanced party to continue any sort of endowment of the clergy. Cromwell, it is true, on more than one occasion had expressed himself strongly against the existing tithe system and would have been perfectly ready to concur in any plan for the removal of its abuses, or for substituting for it—as had been suggested inThe Agreement of the Peoplepresented by the army—a more equitable mode of raising the money needed by the clergy. Further than that he was not likely to go, and matters were brought to a crisis by a resolution passed on November 17 for the abolition of patronage, and still more by the decision of the House on December 10—though only by a majority of two—to reject a scheme of Church-government founded in the main on the lines drawn by Owen, in which the payment of tithes was taken as a financial basis.
Some time before the last vote was taken, the principal officers, under Lambert's leadership, had had under consideration a plan of a written constitutionin which the executive power was to be strengthened and conferred upon Cromwell with the title of King, whilst the legislative power was to be conferred on an elected assembly, thus embodying the ideas which had been enunciated by Cromwell in his conference with the lawyers and politicians at the end of 1651. When this constitution was complete it was shown to Cromwell, who objected to the royal title, and who seems also to have been unwilling to have anything to do with another violent dissolution. On December 10, when the vote on Church organisation was taken, Lambert and his allies found their opportunity. It is probable that they promised Cromwell that the House should be dissolved by its own action, and that, on receiving this assurance, he preferred not to be informed of the course by which this desirable end was to be attained. The course indeed was simple enough. The conservative reformers, if they chose to attend in anything like their full strength, were in a majority, and on the 12th they got up early and flocked to the House, where, before their bewildered opponents could rally in force, they immediately voted that Parliament should resign its powers into the hands of the Lord General. Then, starting for Whitehall in procession with the Speaker at their head, they announced to Cromwell the decision they had taken. Their advanced colleagues kept their seats, but upon attempting to remonstrate were expelled by a bodyof soldiers. As in the absence of the Speaker they could not technically be considered to be a House, those who interfered were able to aver, without literary untruthfulness, that there had been no forcible dissolution of Parliament.
In a very short time Cromwell had agreed with the officers on the constitution to be adopted under the name ofThe Instrument of Government. The executive power was to reside in a Lord Protector and Council, the members of which were to be appointed for life, Cromwell being named as the first Protector. The legislative power was assigned without restriction to a Parliament elected by constituencies formed, so far as the counties were concerned, upon a new franchise, the franchise in the boroughs being left in its old anomalous condition. This latter concession to prejudice was, however, of less importance, as a sweeping redistribution of seats, copied with little alteration from the scheme put forward inThe Agreement of the People, largely increased the number of the county members, and disfranchised in equally large numbers the smaller boroughs which had fallen under the influence of the country gentlemen. The Parliament thus constituted was to meet once in three years and to sit at least for five months. Any Bill passed by this body was to be suspended for twenty days to give an opportunity for the Protector to explain objections he might entertain to it. If Parliamentrefused to listen to his objections, the Bill became law in spite of him, provided that it contained nothing contrary to the Instrument itself. The negative voice about which so much had been heard in the last years of Charles I. was, therefore, not assigned to the Protector. For all that, the control over the executive is of greater importance to the development of representative institutions than legislative independence, and in this respect the hold of Parliament over the executive was of the flimsiest description, consisting merely of the right to propose six names whenever there was a vacancy in the Council, out of which the Council would select two, and the Protector again make his choice between the two. Even the financial arrangements, through which Parliaments usually make their way to power, were settled in such a way as to debar the elected House from obtaining even indirect control. It is true that the Instrument started with the sweeping generalisation that 'no tax, charge, or imposition' was to be 'laid upon the people but by common consent in Parliament,' but this statement was followed by a clause assigning to the Protector £200,000 for civil expenses, besides as much as was needed for keeping up the navy, as well as an army of 30,000 men, and this sum, to which no definite limits were placed, was to be raised out of the customs 'and such other ways and means as shall be agreed upon by the Protector and Council'. Asto the army and navy thus secured, the Protector was to dispose and order them with the consent of Parliament during its short session, but during all the rest of the three years with the consent of the Council only. It would, however, be a mistake to say that the Instrument established absolute government in England. The Protector was bound to act under the control of the Council, and though scarcely any record of the political action of that body has been preserved, there is enough to show that whilst Cromwell's personal influence over it was necessarily great, it was by no means a mere tool in his hands. The constitutional control to which the Protector was subjected was therefore a real one, though that control was in the hands of a body meeting in secret and sufficiently self-centred to make no bid for popularity by the speeches made in the course of discussions amongst its members, as a more popular assembly would have done. Finally, religious liberty was secured for all congregations which did not admit 'Popery or Prelacy'; whilst the right of issuing ordinances with the force of law was granted to the Protector and Council till the first Parliament met.
It has frequently been urged that the Instrument was the earliest example of that system of fixed constitutions, of which the most notable instance is that of the United States, and must therefore rank with such constitutions rather than with the system of Parliamentarysupremacy which was ultimately adopted in England. The comparison with the American constitution, however, can only stand with those who are resolved to fix their attention on similarities and to ignore differences. The Instrument, it is true, resembles the Constitution of the United States in refusing to submit the holders of executive authority to the constant control of the legislature, and in setting forth the relations between the bodies of the State in a written document. On more important points there is a world-wide distinction. In America, the whole federal constitution is redolent of popular control. Every four years the President is re-elected or replaced, and though Congress cannot dismiss a President except by a judicial impeachment, it has complete control over the finances, and can leave him without supply. Add to this the ingrained habit of the American people in giving vent to popular opinion, and in pressing it on the notice of the government which it has given to itself, and we shall find little cause to seek in the Constitution of the United States for a justification of the Instrument—a document drawn up by soldiers and endowing the chief of the State and his councillors with a lifelong tenure of office, with an abundant armed force, and with a power of taxation adequate to all ordinary requirements in time of peace. The question raised by the Instrument was not whether the national control was to be exercised indirectlythrough Parliament, or directly through a popular vote, but whether it should be exercised at all. The constitutional principles alike respected in England and America are diametrically opposed to those on which the government of the Protectorate was founded.
On December 16, 1653, Oliver was installed at Westminster as Lord Protector under the conditions of the Instrument. His Council consisted of seven officers and eight civilians, the most notable of the latter being Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper—better known by the title long afterwards conferred on him by Charles II. as the Earl of Shaftesbury—who had been an active member of the Councils formed after the break-up of the Long Parliament. Little as is known of his actions during this period of his life, his rallying to the Protectorate can only be explained as the result of the conviction that Oliver was in earnest in his intention of giving to the new government a preponderatingly civilian character, and of keeping it out of the hands of fanatics on one hand, and of soldiers on the other. In Thurloe, who had acted as Secretary to the Council since the spring of 1652, the Protector acquired an official whose ability was beyond dispute, who was appalled by no labours, and one who, with the aid of the network of spies whose poverty he utilised, was keen-sighted in penetrating the secrets of conspirators at home and abroad.
The Protectorate was at least placed beyond immediate danger by the adhesion of the army and the fleet. Scarcely less important was the concurrence of the judges, amongst them that honourable man and eminent lawyer Matthew Hale, who had won Oliver's approbation by his services in the cause of law-reform. Hale, indeed, informed the Protector that as he was personally desirous of seeing a Royalist restoration, he could only remain on the bench on the condition that he should be excused from taking part in the trials of political prisoners. Oliver at once gave the required promise. The compromise was creditable to both the parties concerned.
The Protector, by his assumption of the government, had roused up enemies enough to make him chary of dispensing with the support of so valuable a helper. To the Royalists, who hoped to strike at a single person more easily than at a Parliament, were added the Fifth Monarchy preachers, who held that Oliver was 'the vile person to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom,' but who should 'come in peaceably and obtain the kingdom by flatteries,' as foretold by the Prophet Daniel. They were the more dangerous as they were known to have supporters in the army, especially as Harrison, who shared their opinions, had been thought of by the advanced members of the nominated Parliament as a possible substitute for Oliver in the command. The first repressive actionof the Protectorate was therefore to place two of the most turbulent of the preachers under lock and key, and to deprive Harrison of his commission. Such men were only really dangerous by their hold on a portion of the army, whilst the Commonwealth's men, such as Bradshaw and Vane, though not in the least likely to head an armed resistance, were strong in the conviction which they shared with a considerable number of their countrymen, that the only possibility of defence against the evils of military rule was to be found in a recurrence to legality. It is true that with them legality consisted in the restoration of a sovereign Parliament, whilst the Royalists saw it in the restoration of the King, but if ever time and circumstances should fuse the two ideas together, a body of opinion would be created which would try to the uttermost the fabric of a government raised on other principles.
Oliver's task was necessarily conditioned by the nature of the opposition he had to encounter. His new system, if it were to have a chance of becoming permanent, would have to commend itself to that large majority of men who follow no ideals, but are content to live under any rule, whatever may have been its origin, if only the rulers confer upon them a reasonable amount of protection, and are sufficiently in sympathy with the governed to be regarded with love rather than with fear. It was this quality that had mainly helped Elizabeth to make a doubtful legal position a step inher triumphant career, and it was to Elizabeth alone amongst recent English sovereigns that Oliver looked with respect and admiration. Nor was he deficient in many of the characteristics which had made Elizabeth great. He had the same patriotism, the same skill in the selection of agents, the same impatience of partisan bitterness in Church and State, the same readiness to trust in the healing virtues of time. The chief obstacles in the way of a repetition of Elizabeth's success lay, not merely in the stain of the king's blood upon his hands, but also in his leadership of an army of which the officers shaped their conduct in accordance with distinct religious and political ideas. He had risen to power by the sympathy of these men. Was it possible to secure the sympathy of the nation without alienating the army to the support of which he must look till he could place his authority on a wider basis?
In the first and easiest portion of the task before the Protector, the redress of grievances weighing upon the people, there was no hesitation. The Instrument had conferred upon Oliver and his Council the right of issuing ordinances with the force of law up to the meeting of Parliament; and in little more than eight months no fewer than eighty-two of these ordinances had been issued subject to amendment, if Parliament chose to interfere. The Council was, in fact, like the Cabinet of to-day, far more capable of initiating legislation than a Parliament consisting of several hundredmembers, and that so little criticism attended these ordinances may be taken as satisfactory evidence that there was good reason for that strengthening of the government which had been the main argument of the founders of the new constitution. The ordinance for the reform of Chancery was certainly exposed to the conservative objections of the lawyers and was, no doubt, susceptible of improvement, but it aimed at the removal of acknowledged abuses, especially at accelerating the movements of a Court whose long delays had caused that wide-spread irritation which had given support even to the exaggerated proposals of the nominated Parliament.
Still more important was the adoption of the new scheme of Church government. The minister presented to a living was required to have a certificate of fitness from three persons of known godliness and integrity, one of them being a settled minister; afterwards he was to hand this certificate to certain commissioners known as Triers and to obtain their testimony that he was 'a person for the grace of God in him, his holy and unblamable conversation, as also for his knowledge and utterance, able and fit to preach the gospel'. Having become an incumbent, he was liable to expulsion by a local body of Ejectors for immorality or for holding blasphemous or atheistical opinions. As long as he was maintained in his post, he might uphold any Puritan system he pleased andorganise his congregation on the Presbyterian, Independent, or Baptist system, if he could persuade them to follow him. Those persons, whether lay or clerical, who objected to the system upheld in their parish church, were at liberty to form separate congregations—gathered Churches, as they were called—at their own discretion. Later on, towards the close of 1655, Oliver's tolerant spirit gave way to the return of the Jews, who had been exiled from England since the reign of Edward I. A few Unitarians were no doubt excluded from the benefits of his toleration. Moreover, the Society of Friends, now rising into importance under the leadership of George Fox, was also threatened with exclusion as presumably guilty of blasphemy, though the Protector himself not infrequently interfered on behalf of its members. Even if this had been otherwise, the Society put in no claim for participation in a legal support or even for acknowledgment by the State.
That the Church thus constituted was but a Puritan Church is the charge commonly brought against the system of the Protectorate. That it was so is certainly not to be denied, but, after all, it must be remembered that, so far as opposition to Puritanism was based on definite religious grounds, and not merely on moral slackness, it was confined to a comparatively small number of Englishmen. Before the days of Laud, the clergy of the Church had been for the most part, so faras their teaching was concerned, Puritan in their ideas, and lax in their ceremonial observances, and thus the ecclesiastical changes initiated by the Long Parliament had been received by the bulk of the laity rather as the removal of innovations than as the establishment of something entirely new. The honour in which episcopacy and the Prayer Book were now held was mainly confined to the Royalist gentry and to scholars expelled from the Universities, and was therefore understood to be closely connected with political aims. Even so, there was no attempt as yet on the part of the Government to suppress the use of the Prayer Book in private houses, and there is reason to suppose that if no political disturbances had followed, no such attempt would have been made at a later time. The system of the Protectorate was undoubtedly the most tolerant yet known in England—more tolerant, indeed, than public opinion would, if left to itself, have sanctioned.
Not only by its legal reforms did the Protectorate strive to commend itself to the nation. Oliver had never thrown his heart into the Dutch war, and a little before he dissolved the Long Parliament, a great English victory in a battle which began off Portland and ended under Cape Grisnez, had secured the mastery over the Channel to the English fleet. That fleet rallied to the new Government; even Blake, who was hostile at first, accepting the result of politicalchanges, and finally throwing in his lot with the Protectorate, on the ground that it was the business of the navy to leave politics alone, and—though the expression is not traceable on sufficient evidence to Blake's lips—'to keep foreigners from fooling us'. The wound that Blake received off Portland incapacitated him from taking a considerable part in the later battles of the war, the burden lying for the most part on Monk, who won victories off the Gabbard in June and off the Texel in July, not long after the nominated Parliament had entered on its unlucky career. In the latter conflict, Tromp, the great Dutch admiral whose ill success was due not to any failure of his powers or to any want of manliness in his crews, but to the inefficiency of the Government he served, was killed by a shot as he was entering into the battle. Even whilst the nominated Parliament was still in session, a negotiation with the Dutch had been opened, and this negotiation, which was countenanced by Oliver from the first and carried on earnestly by him as Protector, ended in a peace signed on April 5, 1654.
Those who wish to estimate the value of Oliver's foreign policy and its bearing upon the fortunes of the government he hoped to establish will do well to study at length the story of his negotiation with the Dutch, and of his contemporary excursions into the domain of Continental affairs. It is beyond doubt that he was desirous of peace with the Dutch on the groundthat they were Protestants, and that he was also desirous of allying himself with other Protestant States for the protection of Protestants under persecution by Roman Catholic Governments. Yet, not only did this fail to hinder him from exacting hard terms from the Dutch, but the motive of his diplomacy is revealed in his eagerness to make an agreement with his actual enemies a step to immediate hostilities with other nations. At one time he proposed a plan for the partition between England and the Netherlands of so much of the globe as lies outside Europe whilst he was at the same time negotiating with the Governments of France and Spain, offering to make common cause with one or the other in the war then raging between them. No doubt some religious element could be imported into either quarrel. To help Spain against France, at least in the way he proposed, was to vindicate the French Protestants against a persecution to which they were to some extent exposed, in spite of the acceptance by their Government of the Edict of Nantes. To assist France against Spain was to weaken the most bigoted Roman Catholic Government in existence.
What we are here concerned with, however, is not the details of Oliver's foreign policy, but its conception as a whole. It is true that the existing position of affairs in Europe,—in which France and Spain were neutralising the forces of one another—was almost aninvitation to the strong military and naval power of the Protectorate to extend its influence at the expense of one or other of the rivals; but, so far as this consideration may have played its part in bringing Oliver to a decision, it has left no traces in his recorded words. Obviously, when he undertook the negotiation with the Dutch, he had two courses before him, either to lay the foundations of a general peace, or to leave himself free to push military and naval enterprises in other directions. It was the latter course on which he resolved—a course which has gained him the admiration of a posterity prompt to recognise in Oliver the ruler who, having received from the Commonwealth an excellently organised army and navy, was the first to apply those potent instruments of conquest to the acquisition of over-sea dominion. What posterity has failed to observe is that this design was incompatible with his other design of settling the government of England on a constitutional basis. By his resolve to seek military employment for the magnificent force that he had welded together, and to find reasons for going to war with some nation or other, rather than be driven into war by the necessity of upholding the honour and interests of the country, Oliver was compelled to keep up a military and naval establishment which may not have been in excess of the taxable capacity of the nation; but which at all events imposed a burden much heavierthan that to which Englishmen had been accustomed to submit. Before Parliament met, after many hesitations he had resolved to send out one fleet under Blake into the Mediterranean to enforce the release of English prisoners taken by the pirates of the Barbary coast, and another fleet under Penn to seize upon Hispaniola or some other West Indian island as a response to the refusal of Spain to allow English merchantmen to trade even with English colonies in the West Indies, as well as to various acts of violence already committed by Spanish officials in American waters.
That in both these cases Oliver was justified in seeking redress can hardly be denied. As regards Spain, he had already made a twofold demand on Cardenas, the Spanish ambassador, first, for liberty of trade in the Indies—not necessarily, so far as our information goes, for liberty of trade with Spanish possessions—and, secondly, for entire liberty of religion for English merchants and sailors in their own houses on Spanish soil and in their ships in Spanish ports—he not being satisfied with the offer of Spain to renew the stipulations of the treaty signed by Charles I., in which the Inquisition was debarred from acting against English Protestants so long as they created no scandal. Both demands were promptly rejected. "It is," replied Cardenas, "to ask my master's two eyes." Oliver's notion that he could attack a Spanish colonyin the West Indies and yet remain at peace with Spain can only be explained by his admiration for Elizabethan methods, which led him to suppose that the existing Spanish Government would be as ready as that of Philip II. to put up with a system which kept peace in Europe whilst war was being waged in America. It is not, however, with problems of international morality that we are at present concerned. Before Blake could sail for the Mediterranean or Penn for the West Indies, Parliament would meet, and would be confronted with the fact that, in addition to his fleets, the Protector had on foot a land force of 57,000 men, a number exceeding by no less than 27,000 the 30,000 which the Instrument itself had laid down as the normal strength of the army. It is true that he could hardly have met his engagements with a smaller force. Ireland was only recently subdued; an insurrection against the English conquerors—known as Glencairn's rising—was in full swing in Scotland; the dread of a Royalist movement in England required the maintenance of more troops than would be needed in quieter times, whilst other regiments were already preparing for embarkation in the West Indian fleet. On the other hand, when it is remembered that it was through his command of the services of these soldiers that Oliver had been raised to power, that he could still count on their support to maintain him in it, and that he was callingupon the nation to bear the burden of enterprises which he had originated without asking its consent, can it be matter of wonder that at such a time there should be some effort on the part of a Parliament which had come to look upon itself as representing the nation to impose limits upon the burdens which had already far outgrown even the prescriptions of the Instrument itself?
The elections to the first Protectorate Parliament were held under peculiar conditions. In the boroughs still permitted to return members the old conditions existed, but in the counties to which a redistribution of seats had transferred the electoral power, hitherto possessed by small villages under the influence of the neighbouring landowners, the Instrument had established a uniform franchise of the ownership of real or personal property worth £200. So far as we can trace any direct issue before the constituencies, the elections turned on the approval or renunciation of the policy of the advanced party in the nominated Parliament, and on this the electorate gave no uncertain sound. That party was practically swept away, and a full approbation thereby accorded to the conservative policy which had been the main strength of the appeal made to the country by the new government. It did not follow that the new constitution would meet with the same approbation. A not inconsiderable number of the Commonwealthmen, such as Bradshaw and Hazlerigg, sore at their expulsion from the benches of the Long Parliament, had been returned, together with a goodly company of political Presbyterians, who might be expected to do their best to free Parliament from the shackles of the Instrument.
Under these circumstances, Oliver's speech at the opening of Parliament was a masterpiece of skill. Dwelling on the points on which he and the majority of his hearers were in agreement, he kept out of sight those on which differences might arise. He called for healing and settlement, for orderly government which might replace the confusions of the past and stem the tide of fanaticism in the present. He dwelt not on the extent of the liberty of conscience proclaimed in the Instrument, but on the restrictions imposed in that document, especially on such teachers as 'under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practise licentiousness'. He held up for acceptance the doctrine that, when such a result was to be feared, it was the duty of the magistrate to intervene. He protested against the notion that it was antichristian for a minister to receive ordination, and also against the notion that the Fifth Monarchy was about to commence, and that it was 'for men, on this principle, to betitle themselves that they are the only men to rule kingdoms, govern nations, and give laws to people, and determine of property and liberty and everythingelse'. Then came Oliver's appeal for support on the grounds of the difficulties he had inherited from his predecessors—troubles in Ireland and Scotland, trade with Portugal and France interrupted, as well as a war with the Dutch; after which he set forth the benefits of the Instrument, the legal and ecclesiastical reforms it had rendered possible, the peace with the Dutch, and the commercial treaties concluded with Sweden and Denmark. Finally came a hint that Parliament might well be liberal with its supplies, as in spite of the enormous burdens weighing upon it, the Government had diminished, by no less than £30,000 a month, the assessment tax by which army and navy were in part supported. It has often been doubted whether Oliver had in him the making of a Parliamentary tactician. Those who reply in the affirmative may point to this speech in defence of their opinion, especially if we accept the evidence of the Dutch ambassadors that Oliver—in words subsequently omitted from the published speech—concluded by a direct invitation to the House to take into consideration the Instrument, no doubt expecting its easy acceptance by men who were as desirous of order as himself. Confirmatory of this conclusion is the fact that when the Parliamentary debates opened and the question was asked whether the House was prepared to leave the government under the control of a single man, it was a member of the Council whodemanded that all other business should be laid aside till the Instrument had been submitted to the approval of the House.
When this demand had been complied with, it became evident that the majority of the members were in favour of imposing further restrictions on the Protector which would make him no more than a tool in the hands of Parliament. Such a position Oliver absolutely declined to accept, and on its being known that Harrison had been seeking the advantage of his own party by stirring up confusion at Westminster, and had boasted that he would have 20,000 men at his back, he struck firmly and sharply. Harrison was sent for under guard, and Parliament was ordered to attend the Protector in the Painted Chamber.
The speech which the Protector delivered to the members may rank as the ablest which is known to have fallen from his lips. There can be no doubt that he would personally have preferred the retention of the Instrument as it stood, but he was aware of the objections taken to it, and all that we know leads us to believe that those objections were shared by members of his own Council. At all events, after a justification of his own conduct in relation to the preparation of the Instrument, and an argument that it had been accepted by the electors who had been bound by its terms to acknowledge the settlement of the Government in a single person and Parliament, heproceeded to offer a compromise. He was prepared to substitute for the Instrument a Parliamentary constitution, provided that four conditions were admitted as fundamentals to be handed down to posterity as unassailable. The first was that the country was to be governed by a single person and a Parliament; the second, that Parliaments were not to make themselves perpetual; the third, that liberty of conscience should be respected; the fourth, that neither Protector nor Parliament should have absolute power over the militia. It speaks volumes for Oliver's power of seeing into the heart of a situation, that whilst the Instrument of Government, and the absolute supremacy of a single House with power to defy dissolution, have alike passed into the realms of unrealised theory, every one of Oliver's fundamentals has been adopted by the nation—not indeed in any written constitution, but with the stronger and more enduring guarantee of a practice accepted beyond dispute by the conscience of the people itself. The four fundamentals on behalf of which he now appealed to the House formed the political legacy bequeathed by him to posterity.
To obtain acquiescence in this compromise, Oliver directed that no member should take his seat who refused to sign the following declaration: "I do hereby freely promise and engage to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector and the Commonwealth ofEngland, Scotland and Ireland, and shall not, according to the tenor of the indentures whereby I am returned to serve in this present Parliament, propose or give my consent to alter the Government as it is settled in one person and a Parliament". Those who refused subscription were excluded from all participation in the business of the House.
The imposition of such restriction was doubtless condemnable on the principle that the will of the electorate expressed through its representatives must be taken as final in all disputes. Neither Cromwell, however, nor his opponents had recognised such a principle. Vane and Bradshaw had been ready to exclude Royalists, and other unfit persons, whilst the authors of the Instrument had imposed qualifications with a very similar object. If a test there was to be, the one now selected was not only the lightest possible, but it was one that had already been signed by each constituency on behalf of its members, without which formality they were not, according to the Instrument, entitled to take their seats. It left them perfectly at liberty to propose any amendment of the constitution, even to vote against any one of Oliver's fundamentals with the exception of the first.
It is impossible here to enter into details of the constitutional debates which followed. It is sufficient to say that the basis which Parliament proposed to substitute for the Instrument was the revival of thenegative voice, so that no constitutional innovation could be made without the Protector's consent. Of the four fundamentals, the first two—the one relating to the position of the single person and the other refusing to Parliament the right of perpetuating itself—were accepted without opposition. The other two raised greater difficulties. The House was very far from being anxious to extend religious liberty as widely as the Protector desired, but it ultimately agreed to a form of words which practically left the decision in his hands. The absolutely insurmountable difficulty was found in the disposal of the army. In the first place, Parliament held out for the diminution of the numbers of the regular forces to the 30,000 men allowed by the Instrument, and required that if more were needed they should be raised in the form of a militia which would fall more readily under the influence of the local gentry. In the second place, the House resolved to limit its grant of supply to the taxation required for the maintenance of the army for a term of five years only, thus reserving to itself the ultimate financial control which spells sovereignty. Cromwell's whole soul recoiled from the acceptance of a scheme which would render nugatory the proposed constitutional restrictions of Parliamentary omnipotence, by enabling Parliament, at the end of the assigned term, to stop the supplies without which the army could not be maintained; unless indeed,when that term reached its end, the Protector chose to employ his army to crush the Parliament of 1659 as he had employed it to crush the Parliament of 1653. Parliamentary supremacy or military despotism were the alternatives which Oliver or his successor would have to face in the not very distant future.
If two men ride on one horse, one of them must ride in front, and this sober physical truth is equally applicable to the realm of politics. No paper constitution, however deserving of veneration, can prevent there being some force in every nation capable of making itself supreme if it chooses to do so. It may be the constituencies, as in England at the end of the nineteenth century; the people consulted in mass, as in the United States; or the army, as in England in the middle of the seventeenth century. Such supremacy may be subjected to the checks of written or unwritten constitutions, and may be thus thrust into the background till called forth by some special crisis; but in the long run it is impossible to prevent supreme power from exerting itself. The defect of Oliver's fourth fundamental was that it sought to divide the control of the army, or, in other words, Sovereignty, between Protector and Parliament, at a time when the Protector was powerless to act in defiance of the army. It is useless to deny that he was perfectly in the right in hesitating to hand over supreme power to a Parliament uncontrolled by the nation, andcapable of using its financial authority to demolish any system of government that might stand in the way of the ambitions of its members. It is equally undeniable that, as he was unable to depend on the nation as a whole, he had nothing to fall back upon except a Protectorate which, in reality, was controlled by the will of the leading officers, who found in the provisions of the Instrument which they had themselves originated the means of perpetuating their own power by securing—irrespective of the concurrence of Parliament or nation—the levy of taxes, the amount of which was fixed by the Protector and Council alone.
Oliver having once made up his mind to refuse his consent to the new constitution, was anxious to hasten the dissolution of the Parliament. The Instrument having provided that the House should sit for five months, he opportunely remembered that the months by which the army's pay was regulated were lunar months; and on January 22, 1655, when five lunar months were expired, he pronounced its dissolution. The speech in which he announced his determination was stamped with vexation of spirit at the failure of his hopes, a vexation in itself by no means unjustifiable. The tragedy of the situation lay in the undoubted fact that however much they might differ on the means to be pursued, the end at which Protector and Parliament aimed was identical, namely,the conversion of the military into the civil state. Parliament had counted it well done to leave Oliver in possession for five years, whilst Oliver, conscious of his own rectitude of purpose, and ignoring the consideration that at the end of five years he might no longer be living, and that the Protectorate might have passed by demise into less worthy hands, complained that he was not trusted. Why, he asked, had they not come to him to talk the matter over? Why indeed, except that Parliaments have their pride as well as Protectors, and that this one had come to the conclusion that it was its duty to settle the constitution rather than to accept a settlement from a knot of soldiers. If it did not seek an opportunity to discuss such grave questions with Oliver in person, at least it had had the advantage of listening to what might be presumed to be his views when promulgated by those members of his Council who were also members of the House.
In an elaborate defence of the Instrument, Oliver put his finger on the real ground of offence. "Although," he declared in speaking of the rights of the Protector, "for the present the keeping up and having in his power the militia seems the most hard, yet, if it should be yielded up at such a time as this when there is as much need to keep this cause by it—which is evidently at this time impugned by all the enemies of it—as there was to get it, what wouldbecome of all? Or if it should not be equally placed in him and the Parliament, but yielded up at any time, it determines the Power,"i.e., hinders the exercise of authority by the person in possession of power, "either from doing the good he ought, or hindering Parliaments from perpetuating themselves, or from imposing what religion they please on the consciences of men, or what government they please upon the nation; thereby subjecting us to dis-settlement in every Parliament, and to the desperate consequences thereof: and if the nation shall happen to fall into a blessed peace, how easily and certainly will their charge be taken off, and their forces disbanded; and then, where will the danger be to have the militia thus stated?"
It was impossible for the Protector to put his case more convincingly. Yet, admirable as a criticism pointing out the danger likely to follow on the adoption of the proposals of Parliament, Oliver's reasoning pre-supposed the acceptance by Parliament of his own conviction that an armed minority had the right to impose its principles on the unarmed majority—the very belief which the authors of the Parliamentary constitution were most determined to resist. Even if it had been possible for any Puritan party to look for a solution of the problem in an appeal to the unfettered judgment of the nation, it is evident that Oliver would never have agreed to such an arbitration. On theone side was the resolve to get what appeared to be the right thing done, if necessary by force. On the other side was the resolve to eliminate the element of force by subordinating it to the rule of Parliaments. For the moment the decisive word rested with Oliver. "I think myself bound," he said in conclusion, "as in my duty to God, and to the people of these nations, for their safety and good in every respect—I think it my duty to tell you that it is not for the profit of these nations, nor for common and public good for you to continue longer, and therefore I do declare unto you, that I do dissolve this Parliament."
History has pronounced in favour of the view taken by Oliver's antagonists. The reliance on military power in which he had found his refuge did more than all other facts put together to establish, for good or for evil, a reliance on Parliament. It is the special mark of his greatness that he put his whole heart after the dissolution of his first Parliament into an effort to avoid the appearance even of a temporary dictatorship. He shrank from being a military ruler, even under the plea of the necessity of the times. His holding back the dissolution of Parliament till the fifth month—lunar month as it was—had been accomplished, offers the key-note of the position as he judged it. The Parliamentary constitution had perished stillborn. The constitution of the Instrument was in full force, and was to be observed, even thoughit were to his own detriment. The Instrument enabled the Protector and Council to levy such taxation as they thought fit for 30,000 men and for a navy sufficient for defence, whilst he had now on foot some 57,000 soldiers, and, in addition to the home fleet, two others had already been despatched—the one to the Mediterranean, the other to the West Indies. Yet the Protector was able to announce that he would content himself with levying the Assessment money at the low amount of £80,000 a month on the three nations, an amount which the dissolved Parliament had fixed as sufficient for the forces named in the Instrument. Such a decision left the Government with enormous forces—as forces were in those days reckoned—which it had no visible means of paying; but it was an announcement in the most practical form, that, as soon as the existing situation would admit, the military expenditure should be brought down to the requirements of the Instrument. The announcement was accompanied by a proclamation setting forth the principles on which the Protector had decided to act on the thorny question of religious liberty. There was to be complete freedom for all who contented themselves with setting forth their opinions, without 'imposing' on the conscience of others or disturbing their worship. The last clause, which was aimed at the new Society of Friends, commonly styled Quakers by the irreverent multitude, sought to put astop to their practice of carrying on their polemics in churches where congregations were assembled. To the exhortations of George Fox himself the Protector listened with respect. "Come again to my house," said Oliver, "for if thou and I were but an hour a day together, we should be nearer one to the other. I wish you no more ill than I do to my own soul." A reverence for genuineness, in whatever shape, was not the least admirable of Oliver's characteristics.
The clause against 'imposing' was more widely sweeping in its aims. It struck at the claims of the Roman Papacy, and the English episcopacy, as well as at the designs of the late Parliament to establish lists of opinions to which toleration should be refused. It struck also at all attempts to snatch at political power with the object of serving religious ends. Oliver's breach with Parliament had roused attacks from every quarter. There were the Fifth Monarchy men who rejected every form of secular government and whose leaders were not to be silenced except by placing them under guard. Harrison himself had to be placed under arrest. It was not work that Oliver would have chosen. "I know," wrote Thurloe, "it is a trouble to my Lord Protector to have any one that is a saint in truth to be grieved or dissatisfied with him." The Cavaliers might be regarded as hereditary enemies. In the last summer a Cavalier plot to assassinate the Protector had been discovered, andtwo of the plotters, Gerard and Vowel, had been executed. Whilst Parliament was still in session, Thurloe's spies—who were to be found in every land in which their services were required—brought him news of a projected insurrection, and it had been one of Oliver's charges against the members, that their delay in settling the Government had fostered the plot. In March futile attempts to rise were made in various parts of the country, the only one which gained the dignity of an actual insurrection being that in which Penruddock and others gathered in arms at Salisbury, seized the judges of assize in their beds and marched off in the hope of rallying the scattered Royalists of the west. The insurgents, however, were dispersed in Devonshire, where many of them were captured. In the end a few of the ringleaders were tried and executed, whilst a large number of their adherents were transported without legal trial to Barbados. Such procedure, whether it be counted as an evasion or as a breach of the law, was evidence of the difficulty which Oliver would increasingly feel in meeting his enemies otherwise than by the exertion of arbitrary power.