I have troubled you with a long Speech; and I believe it may not have the same resentment * with all that it hath with some. But because that is unknown to me, I shall leave it to God;-and conclude with this: That I think myself bound, 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, not for common and public good, for you to continue here any longer. And therefore I do declare unto you, That I do dissolve this Parliament.t So ends the First Protectorate Parliament; suddenly, very unsuccessfully. A most poor hidebound Pedant Parliament; which reckoned itself careful of the Liberties of England; and was careful only of the Sheepskin Formulas of these; very blind to the Realities of these! Regardless of the facts and clamorous necessities of the Present, this Parliament considered that its one duty was to tie up the hands of the Lord Protector well; to give him no supplies, no power; to make him and keep him the bound vassal and errand-man of this and succeeding Parliaments This once well done, they thought all was done ;-Oliver thought far otherwise. Their painful new-modelling and rebuilding of the Instrument of Government, with an eye to this sublime object, was pointing towards completion, little now but the keystones to be let in :—when Oliver suddenly withdrew the centres! Constitutional arch and ashlar-stones, scaffolding, workmen, mortar-troughs and scaffold-poles sink in swift confusion; and disappear, regretted or remembered by no person,-not by this Editor for one. By the arithmetical account of heads in England, the Lord Protector may surmise that he has lost his Enterprise. But by the real divine and human worth of thinking-souls in England, he still believes that he has it; by this, and by a higher mission too;—and "will take a little pleasure to lose his life" before he loses it! He is not here altogether to count heads, or to count costs, this Lord Protector; he is in the breach of battle; placed there, as he understands, by his Great Commander: whatsoever his difficulties be, he must fight them, cannot quit them; must * Means 'sense excited by it.' Old Pamphlet: reprinted in Parliamentary History, xx., 404-431. fight there till he die. That is the law of his position, in the eye of God, and also of men. There is no return for him out of this Protectorship he has got into. Called to this post as I have been, placed in it as I am, "To quit it, is what I will be willing to be rolled into my grave, and buried with infamy, before 1 will consent, unto !" CHRONOLOGICAL. THE Plots and perils to the Commonwealth, which my Lord Pro tector spoke of to his honorable Members, were not an imagination, but a very tragic reality. Under the shadow of this Constitutioning Parliament, strange things had been ripening without some other eye than the Parliament's, Constitution and Commonwealth in general had been by this time in a bad way! A universal rising of Royalists combined with Anabaptists is in a real state of progress. Dim meetings there have been of Royalist Gentlemen, on nocturnal moors, in this quarter and in that, ' with cart-loads of arms,'—terrified at their own jingle, and rapidly dispersing again till the grand hour come. Anabaptist Levellers have had dim meetings, dim communications; will prefer Charles Stuart himself to the traitor Oliver, who has dared to attempt actual' governing' of men. Charles Stuart has come down to Middleburgh, on the Dutch coast, to be in readiness; 'Hyde is cock-sure."* From the dreary old Thurloes, and rubbish-conti nents, of Spy Letters, Intercepted Letters, Letters of Intelligence; where, scattered at huge intervals, the History of England for those years still lies entombed, it is manifest enough what a winter and spring this was in England. A Protector left without supplies, obliged to cut his Parliament adrift, and front the matter alone; England, from end to end of it, ripe for an explosion; for a universal blazing-up of all the heterogeneous combustibilities it had the Sacred Majesty waiting at Middleburg, and Hyde cocksure! : Nevertheless it came all to nothing;-there being a Protector in it. The Protector, in defect of Parliaments, issued his own Ordinance, the best he could, for payment of old rates and taxes; which, as the necessity was evident, and the sum fixed upon was low, rather lower than had been expected, the country quietly * Manning's Letter in Thurloc iii., 384. |