The Commonwealth. page 9

With that he stamped upon the floor, and the soldiers appearing at the door, he bade Harrison bring them in. The musketeers instantly surrounded him, and laying his hand on the mace, he said, "What shall we do with this bauble? Take it away," and he handed it to a soldier. Then looking at Lenthall, the speaker, he said to Harrison, "Fetch him down!" Lenthall declared that he would not move from his proper post unless he were forced out of it. "Sir," said Harrison, "I will lend you a hand," and taking hold of him, he brought him down, and he walked out of the house. Algernon Sydney, then but a young member, happened to sit next to the speaker, and Cromwell said, " Put liim out!" Sydney, like the speaker, refused to move, but Cromwell reiterated the command, " Put him out!" and Harrison and Worsley, the lieutenant-colonel of Cromwell's regiment of Ironsides, laying each a hand on his shoulder, the young patriot did not wait for the ignominy of being dragged from his seat, but rose and followed the speaker. Cromwell then went on weeding out the members, with epithets of high reproach to each of them. Alderman Allen bade him pause and send out the soldiers, and that all might yet be well; but Cromwell only replied, "It is you that have forced me upon this. I have sought the Lord day and night that he would rather slay me than put me upon this work." He then charged the alderman with embezzlement, as treasurer to the army, and taking first one and then another by the cloak, he said to Challoner, "Thou art a drunkard!" To Wentworth, "Thou art an adulterer!" To Marten, "Thou art a still more lewd character!" Vane,

as he was forced past him, exclaimed, "This is not honest; yea, it is against morality and common honesty." "O, Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane!" exclaimed Cromwell, "the Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!" Thus he saw the house cleared, no one daring to raise a hand against him, though, says Whitelock, " many wore swords, and would sometimes brag high." When all were forth, Cromwell locked the door, and put the key in his pocket, He then returned to Whitehall, and told the council of officers, who yet remained sitting, what he had done, "When I went to the house," he said, "I did not think to do this, but perceiving the spirit of the Lord strong upon me, I resolved no longer to consult flesh and blood."

Such was the manner in which the last vestige of representative government was swept away by Cromwell. Charles I. roused the fiery indignation of parliament, and of all England, as a violater of the privileges of parliament, by entering the house to seize four members who had offended him. Cromwell, who had been one of the first to resist and to avenge this deed, now marched in his soldiers and turned out the whole parliament, about fifty members, with impunity. "They went away so quietly," said Cromwell, "that not a dog barked at their going." Such is the difference betwixt a private man with a victorious army at his back, and one who, though with the name of a king, has lost a nation's confidence by his want of moral honesty. The act of Cromwell was the death of all constitutional life whatever, it was in opposition to all parties but the army; yet no man dared assume the attitude of a patriot; the military Dictatorship was accomplished.

Cromwell's whole excuse was necessity; that without his seizure of the supreme power, the commonwealth could not exist. It ceased to exist by his very deed, and if he saved the faint form of a republic, it was only for five years. As we have seen the great example to the nations of the responsibility of kings, we have now to see an equally significant one of the impossibility of maintaining long any form of government that is not based on the mature opinion and attachment of the people. Republicanism was not the faith of England in the seventeenth century, and therefore neither the despotism of Charles could create a republic with any permanence in it, nor the strenuous grasp of Cromwell maintain it beyond the term of his own existence.

On the afternoon of this celebrated coup-d'etat, Cromwell proceeded to Derby House, accompanied by Harrison and Lambert, where the council was still sitting, and thus addressed the members: - "Gentlemen, if you are here met as private persons, you shall not be disturbed; but if as a council of state, this is no place for you; and since you cannot but know what was done at the house this morning, so take notice that the parliament is dissolved." Bradshaw, who was presiding, said that they knew, and that all England would soon know; but that if he thought that the parliament was dissolved, he was mistaken, "for that no power under Heaven could dissolve them, except themselves. Therefore take you notice of that." Sir Arthur Haselrig and others supported this protest, and then the council withdrew.

Cromwell and his party immediately held a council on what steps were now to be taken, and on the 22nd they issued a declaration in the name of the lord-general and his council of officers, ordering all authorities to continue their functions as before; and in return, addresses of confidence arrived from generals and admirals. On the 6th of June Oliver, in his own name as captain-general and commander- in-chief of all the armies and forces, issued a summons to one hundred and forty persons to meet and constitute a parliament. Six were also summoned from Wales, six from Ireland, and five from Scotland. On the 4th of July about one hundred and twenty of these persons, of Cromwell's own selection - persons, according to his summons, "fearing God, and of approyed fidelity and honesty" - met in the council-chamber at Whitehall. Many of these were gentlemen of good repute and abilities - some of them were nobles, others of noble families - as colonel Montague, colonel Howard, and Anthony Ashley Cooper. Others, however, were of little worldly standing, but had been selected on account of their religious zeal and character. Amongst them was one Barbon, a leather-seller in Fleet Street, who had acquired the cognomen of Praise-God, and whose name being purposely misspelled, became Praise-God Barebone, and the royalist wits of the time, therefore, dubbed the parliament Barebone's Parliament. Hume has represented the zealous independents of that age giving their children such names as Accepted Trevor, Redeemed Compton, God-Reward Smart, Stand-fast-on-high Stringer, and even to a brother of Barbon's, "If Christ had not died for you, you had been damned Barebone," whence, he says, "the name being too long for common use, they shortened it to Damned Barebone." All this, however, cannot be received as the truth, - as there is reason to believe that much is due to the hatred of the royalists.

The more common appellation of this singular parliament was "The Little Parliament." Cromwell opened their session with a very long and extraordinary speech, in which he gave a history of the past contest with the monarchy, and the mercies with which they had been crowned at Naseby, Dunbar, Worcester, and other places; of the backslidings of the Long Parliament, and the "necessity" to remove it and call this assembly. He quoted a vast quantity of Scripture, and told them that they were called of God to introduce practical religion into state affairs; and he then delivered into their hands an instrument, consigning the supreme power in the state into their hands till the 3rd of September, 1654, three months previous to which date they were to elect their successors, who were to sit only for a year, and in their turn elect theirs.

This resignation of the supreme power once in his hands, has been described by historians as a gross piece of hypocrisy, used to avoid the odium of seizing for himself the power of the parliament, which he had forcibly dissolved. Whether that were the case or not, it certainly was a prudent policy, and a safe one, for he knew very well that he possessed supreme power as head of the army, and could, if necessary, dismiss this parliament by that power as he had done the former one. In their character of pietists or saints, as they were called, this parliament opened its session, electing Francis Rouse their speaker, and by exercises of devotion, which continued from eight in the morning till six at night. Thirteen of the most gifted members preached and prayed in succession, and they adjourned, declaring that they had never enjoyed so much of the spirit and presence of Christ in any meetings for worship as they had done that day. It was moved the next morning that they "should go on seeking the Lord" that day too, but this was overruled, and Monday, the 11th, was fixed for that purpose. They then voted themselves the parliament of the commonwealth of England, invited Cromwell and four of his officers to sit as members amongst them, and on the 9th of July reappointed the council of state, amongst whom we find the names of colonel Montague, afterwards earl of Sandwich, the uncle of the poet Dry den, Sir Gilbert Pickering, lord viscount Lisle, brother of Algernon Sydney, Sir Ashley Cooper, and other names of equal note; and however they might be ridiculed on account of their religion, they soon showed that they were conscientious and independent' men. The strongest proof of this was that they did not shrink from opposing the power and interests of Cromwell, who had selected them. Scarcely were they met, when they were appealed to decide upon the case of John Lilburne, who, on the dissolution of the Long Parliament, petitioned Cromwell to allow him to return from his banishment. Cromwell gave no reply, but independent John took the liberty of appearing in London. He was at once seized and committed to Newgate. Lilburne, supported by his friends, petitioned the house to hear and decide the case, though it was the proper business of a jury. They might now have gratified their patron, whom Lilburne had continually assailed as a robber, a usurper, and a murderer; but they declined to interfere, and left him to the ordinary criminal court. There Lilburne so ably defended himself that he was acquitted; but he was again seized on the plea of libellous and seditious language used on his trial, and the house could then no longer refuse, at the instigation of the council, to imprison him. Being removed from the Tower to Elizabeth Castle, in Jersey, and thence to Dover Castle, he there became a convert to the principles of George Fox, a remarkable end for so fiery and democratic a character. The parliament lost no time in proceeding to assert that divine commission, which Cromwell, in his opening speech, had attributed to their call through him. They declared that they were appointed by the Lord, and would have greatly alarmed Cromwell had he not taken care to include amongst them a sufficient number of his stanch adherents But they excited the same alarm in a variety of other classes. They set to work resolutely in cutting down the expenditure of the government; they abolished all unnecessary offices; they revised the regulations of the excise; reformed the constitution of the treasury; reduced exorbitant salaries, and examined thoroughly the public accounts; they adopted measures for the sale of the confiscated lands, and enacted rules for the better registration of births, deaths, and marriages; in fact, they introduced those salutary regulations for registration, to which we have only reverted of late years. They went further; they made marriage by a civil magistrate valid, and, indeed, necessary for the enjoyment of the civil effects of marriage. Marriage by a clergyman was left optional still.

They next attacked the unequal and oppressive modes of raising the one hundred and twenty thousand pounds a month for the maintenance of the army; the assessments in some cases amounting to two, in others, to ten shillings in the pound. From taxation they proceeded to law, and prepared a bill to abolish the court of chancery, in which the abuses and delays had been a constant source of complaint in petitions to parliament for years. The enormities of that court equalled what they have been in our own times, and there were said to be no less than twenty-three thousand causes undecided, some of which had been ten, twenty, and even thirty years before it, involving enormous costs, and the utter ruin of many families. This parliament voted the abolition of the whole system, and had a bill in progress for the removal of the causes to a more efficient tribunal, when it was suddenly dissolved.

But they were not content with destroying the court of chancery, they set about a general reform of the laws. They contended that every Englishman should understand the laws of his country, and that by a proper digest they might be reduced to the compass of a pocket volume. They, in fact, anticipated Napoleon in his code, and appointed a committee to make the necessary revision, and to weed the real and useful statutes out of the chaotic mass of contradictory, obsolete, and unjust laws which overlayed them; the dicta of judges in many cases superseded and prevented the original enactments, so that men's lives and properties were at the mercy, not of the decrees of parliament, but the opinions of individuals. It may be imagined what a consternation this daring innovation excited throughout Westminster Hall, and all the dusky, cobwebby cells of the lawyers. A terrible cry was raised that a set of ignorant men were about to destroy the whole noble system of British jurisprudence, and to introduce instead the law of Moses!

The church was in equal terror. In the first place, these zealous reformers indulged their bigotry, for even the independents had only made half the discovery of toleration. Cromwell, whilst professing to allow the enjoyment of all forms of Christianity in Ireland, refused to allow the catholics to celebrate mass, and his Little Parliament now passed an act for the extirpation of popish priests and Jesuits, and for seizing two-thirds of the real and personal property of recusants. They then advanced to the more just and enlightened war on advowsons and tithes. They contended that no individual ought to possess the power of imposing a minister on his neighbours, but that every man had a right to choose for himself. They therefore voted that advowsons should be abolished. As for tithes, they contended that they ought to be abolished, and a proper maintenance provided for the clergy by other means. They appointed a committee to consider the necessary step towards this end.

But the projects of these radical reformers, who were centuries before their time, were cut short by the universal outcry from lawyers, churchmen, officials, and a host of interested classes. They were represented as a set of mad fanatics, who in parliament were endeavouring to carry out the wild doctrines which the anabaptists and fifth-monarchy men were preaching out of doors. They were assailed by every species of ridicule and calumny, most of which has travelled unmolested down to our own time, and the Bare- bone's Parliament became a byword for everything fanatic and absurd, though they were in reality only too far a-head of their age, and were attempting what our most philosophic reformers are yet inculcating and endeavouring to establish. Borne down by public opinion, Cromwell was compelled to dissolve them, in fact, to resume the supreme power which he had committed to them. Accordingly, on the 12th of December, Cromwell's friends mustered in full strength, and colonel Sydenham moved, that as the proceedings of parliament were regarded as calculated to overturn almost every interest in the country, they could not proceed, and that they should restore their authority to the hands whence they had received it. The motion was vehemently opposed, but the independents had adopted their plan. The mover declared that he would no longer sit in an assembly which must be rendered abortive by general opposition. He therefore rose: the speaker, who was one of the party, rose too, and the independents, forming a procession, proceeded to Whitehall, and resigned their commission into the hands of Cromwell. The stanch dissentients remained and engaged in prayer, in which act two officers, Goffe and White, sent to close the house, found them. White asked them what they did there. They replied, "We are seeking the Lord." "Then," said he, rudely, "you may go somewhere else, for to my certain knowledge, the Lord has not been here these many years."