ganders, if the clack of human tongues and leading-articles, if 'the steel of armies and the crack of Doom deter thee, when the voice was God's !-Yes, this too is in the law for a man, my poor 'quack-ridden, bewildered Constitutional friends; and we ought 'to remember this withal. Thou shalt is written upon Life in 'characters as terrible as Thou shalt not,—though poor Dryasdust 'reads almost nothing but the latter hitherto.' And so we close Part Seventh; and proceed to trace with all piety, what faint authentic vestiges of Oliver's Protectorate the envious Stupidities have not obliterated for us. PART VIII FIRST PROTECTORATE PARLIAMENT 1654 LETTERS CXCII.-CXCV THE 3d of September ever since Worcester Battle has been kept as a Day of Thanksgiving; commemorative of the mercy at Dunbar in 1650, and of the crowning-mercy which followed next year;a memorable day for the Commonwealth of England. By Article Seventh of the Instrument of Government, it is now farther provided that the Parliament shall meet on that auspicious Anniversary when it next comes round. September 3d, 1654, then shall the First Protectorate Parliament meet;1 successive Parliaments, one at least every Three years, are to follow, but this shall be the First. Not to be dissolved, or prorogued, for at least Five months. Free Parliament of Four-hundred; for England Three-hundred-and forty, for Scotland Thirty, for Ireland Thirty; fairly chosen by election of the People, according to rules anxiously constitutional, laid down in that same Instrument,-which we do not dwell upon here. Smaller Boroughs are excluded; among Counties and larger Boroughs is a more equable division of representatives according to their population: nobody to vote that has not some clearly visible property to the value of Two-hundred Pounds; but all that have can vote, and can be voted for,-except, of course, all such as have appeared against the Parliament in any of these Wars 'since 1 [Hobbes, in his Behemoth, says: "I believe he was a little superstitious in the choice of September 3, because it was lucky to him in 1650 and 1651, at Dunbar and Worcester; but," he continues, "he knew not how lucky the same would be to the nation in 1658, at Whitehall" (Masere's Tracts, ii. 632).] the First of January 1642,' and 'not since given signal testimony' of their repenting that step. To appearance, a very reasonable Reform Bill;-understood to be substantially the same with that invaluable measure once nearly completed by the Rump: only with this essential difference, That the Rump Members are not now to sit by nature and without election; not now to decide, they, in case of extremity, Thou shalt sit, Thou shalt not sit :others than they will now decide that, in cases of extremity. How this Parliament, in its Five-months Session, will welcome the new Protector and Protectorate is naturally the grand question during those Nine or Ten Months that intervene. A question for all Englishmen; and most of all for Oliver Protector; who however, as we can perceive, does not allow it to overawe him very much; but diligently doing this day the day's duties, hopes he may find, as God has often favoured him to do, some good solution for the morrow, whatsoever the morrow please to be. A man much apt to be overawed by any question that is smaller than Eternity, or by any danger that is lower than God's Displeasure, would not suit well in Oliver's place at present! Perhaps no more perilous place, that I know clearly of, was ever deliberately accepted by a man. 'The post of honour,'-the post of terror and of danger and forlorn-hope: this man has all along been used to occupy such. To see a little what kind of England it was, and what kind of incipient Protectorate it was, take, as usual, the following small and few fractions of Authenticity, of various complexion, fished from the doubtful slumber-lakes and dust-vortexes, and hang them out at their places in the void night of things. They are not very luminous; but if they were well let alone, and the positively tenebrific were well forgotten, they might assist our imaginations in some slight measure. Sunday, 18th December 1653. A certain loud-tongued, loudminded Mr. Feak, of Anabaptist-Leveller persuasion, with a Colleague, seemingly Welsh, named Powel, have a PreachingEstablishment, this good while past, in Blackfriars; a PreachingEstablishment every Sunday, which on Monday Evening becomes a National-Charter Convention as we should now call it: there Feak, Powel and Company are in the habit of vomiting forth from their own inner-man, into other inner-men greedy of such pabulum, [Vavasor Powel was certainly a Welshman; one of the "intruded clergy" put in by the Propagators of the Gospel.] a very flamy fuliginous set of doctrines, such as the human mind, superadding Anabaptistry to Sansculottism, can make some attempt to conceive. Sunday the 18th, which is two days after the Lord Protector's Installation, this Feak-Powel Meeting was unusually large; the Feak-Powel inner-man unusually charged. Elements of soot and fire really copious; fuliginous-flamy in a very high degree! At a time, too, when all Doctrine does not satisfy itself with spouting, but longs to become instant Action. 'Go and tell your Protector,' said the Anabaptist Prophet, That he has deceived the Lord's People; 'that he is a perjured villain,'— 'will not reign long,' or I am deceived; 'will end worse than the last Protector did,' Protector Somerset who died on the scaffold, or the tyrant Crooked Richard himself! Say, I said it !—A very foul chimney indeed, here got on fire. And Major-General Har'rison, the most eminent man of the Anabaptist Party, being 'consulted whether he would own the New Protectoral Govern'ment, answered frankly, No;'- -was thereupon ordered to retire home to Staffordshire, and keep quiet.1 Does the reader bethink him of those old Leveller Corporals at Burford, and diggers at St. George's Hill five years ago; of Quakerisms, Calvinistic Sansculottisms, and one of the strangest Spiritual Developments ever seen in any country? The reader sees here one foul chimney on fire, the Feak-Powel chimney in Blackfriars ; and must consider for himself what masses of combustible material, noble fuel and base soot and smoky explosive fire-damp, in the general English Household it communicates with! Republicans Proper, of the Long Parliament; Republican Fifth-Monarchists of the Little Parliament; the solid Ludlows, the fervent Harrisons from Harry Vane down to Christopher Feak, all manner of Republicans find Cromwell unforgivable. To the Harrison-andFeak species Kingship in every sort, and government of man by man, is carnal, expressly contrary to various Gospel Scriptures. Very horrible for a man to think of governing men ;-whether he ought even to govern cattle, and drive them to field and to needful penfold, except in the way of love and persuasion,' seems doubtful to me! But fancy a Reign of Christ and his Saints; Christ and his Saints just about to come,-had not Oliver Cromwell stept in and prevented it! The reader discerns combustibilities enough; conflagrations, plots, stubborn disaffections and confusions, on the Republican and Republican-Anabaptist side of things. 1 Thurloe, i. 641 ;-442, 591, 621. VOL. II.-21 |