out by force was a necessary step towards the establishment of a really constitutional government, the best thing under the circumstances for the nation at that time would have been for Fairfax and Ireton to have turned them out, when they found by their treatment of the "Agreement of the People," that they were not inclined to act an honest part.

But Fairfax and Ireton were men of the strictest and most punctilious honour. It was from this Parliament, at least from a parliament of which they still considered this residue as the representative, that they had received their commissions, and they knew that when the generals of an army seek to corrupt their soldiers and to win their favour in order to use them against those to whom they have sworn allegiance, they become degraded to the condition of robbers or pirates. The difference between them and Cromwell was the difference between the Roman generals while Roman generals were men of honour, and the Roman generals when Rome had become thoroughly corrupt. The former, as Plutarch observes, were men of kingly souls, and moderate in their living, and satisfied with a small fixed expenditure, and they thought it baser to attempt to win the soldiers' favour than to fear their enemies. But the generals in the time of Sulla acted the demagogue, while they were in command, for their own aggrandizement and their country's ruin; and by purchasing the services of the soldiers by the money they distributed among them, they made the Roman State a thing for bargain and sale, and themselves the slaves of the vilest wretches, in order that they might domineer over honest

men.

1

This character would not apply to the English army

1 Life of Sulla, c. 12.

under Fairfax, but we shall see as we proceed how Fairfax's successor changed the character of that army by weeding out the citizen element and substituting for it men who fought not for a principle, civil or religious, but simply for pay.

As this remnant of the Long Parliament thus declined even to take the sense of the part of the English people who were well-affected to themselves as to the form and nature of their government, the government of England at the time cannot, according to any intelligible meaning attached to that word, be called a republic, democracy, or commonwealth, in the sense in which that last word was used by them. What form of government was it then? It is easier to say what it was not, than what it was. It was not a monarchy, and it was not a democracy: neither was it an oligarchy, nor an aristocracy according to Aristotle's definition of those forms of government. But as it held its power not at all from or at the will of the nation, but from and at the will of a victorious army, composed indeed of citizen soldiers and not of mere mercenaries, it may be described as a close, able, and wellobeyed military oligarchy, or rather aristocracy, which by the very fact of calling itself a commonwealth recognized popular rights and wants, and kept in view great national objects to such an extent as was consistent with its own very critical and difficult position, and which might perhaps, by dexterous management and undeviating integrity and single-mindedness in its members, have developed itself ultimately into an actual commonwealth or republic. But the conditions necessary for such a result are so rarely found among mankind that the chances of its ultimate failure, either from external or internal enemies, were greater than the chances of its ultimate success. Besides,

D

those who now were at the head of affairs in England had already taken a step which, although some of them might have thought it conducive to their safety, was one ultimately leading to the destruction not only of their republic but of themselves.

If there ever existed a chance for those who really wished to establish a republic, they threw that chance away when they determined on the king's execution. As Charles could not be amenable to the English law of treason, his execution was not only a most unjust, but a most impolitic act on the part of the republican party. There was a time when they might perhaps really have established a republic, and a time when, I am inclined to think, even Cromwell would have cooperated heartily in the work. It was, I think, with a view to defeat the views of the more violent fanatics in the army with regard to bringing Charles to a violent death, that Cromwell brought about the king's escape from Hampton Court. I think that he meant that Charles should make his escape to France. Perhaps Cromwell did not know all the difficulties in the way of that. However the plan failed, and then Cromwell's own safety might compel him to go along with the army fanatics. But probably even Cromwell, with all his sagacity and foresight, had not calculated all the wonderful effects of the king's trial and execution of the public spectacle of a king, the representative of a long line of kings, first patiently submitting to the interruptions and to the sentence of his judges, and then kneeling at the block like a common malefactor, and dying quietly and bravely. Charles thus obtained by his death a posthumous reputation, which his life could never have obtained for him; for the whole course of

that life had exhibited him as a man of a soft head, and a hard but not a brave heart, forming a marked contrast to the hard head and soft yet brave heart, which, "despite some passing clouds of crime," formed the character of Cromwell.

If Charles had escaped to France, and had succeeded in making an attempt to recover his power, and to execute his purpose of doing for England what his wife's brother had done for France by the help of a French army, the parliamentary army of England might have established Cromwell's family firmly on the throne, or set up a republican government, which would have had at least some chance of success. But the day of that execution in front of Whitehall, which the republican party hailed as the commencement of their beloved republic, was instead of that the total destruction of any chance that had existed for the establishment of a real republic. Henceforth the character of Charles assumed a new aspect, shaped and coloured from his death, and not from his life.

It appears that Ireton's draft embodying his honest, able, and, as far as we have now the means of forming a judgment, practicable scheme for reforming and settling the representative system and government of England, not only met with no acceptance, but exposed its author to the ill-will and hostility of this remnant of the Long Parliament, which styled itself the parliament of the Commonwealth of England. This hostility was signally manifested in the debate on the election of members of the Council of State, when the name. of Ireton was rejected. Besides the clause excluding practising lawyers from being eleceed as members Parliament, there were other expressions in the "Agree

of

ment," of which the consciences of many members would feel the force and justice, and which on that very account would be the more disagreeable; "and we desire and recommend it to all men, that, in all times, the persons to be chosen for this great trust may be men of courage, fearing God, and hating covetousness."

2nd. To

3rd. To

4th. To sit

2

On the 13th of February, Mr. Scott reported from the committee, appointed to nominate a Council of State, the instructions for the Council of State, fourteen in number, which were read and assented to.1 Whitelock has stated concisely that their powers were, 1st. To command and settle the militia of England and Ireland. set forth such a navy as they should think fit. appoint and dispose magazines and stores. and execute the powers given them for a year. Mr. Scott also reported a list of the names of persons to be of the Council of State. On the 14th of February, the House took up the debate upon the names of persons to be of the Council of State. They first passed a resolution that some of the officers of the army should be of the Council of State. The names proposed were then adopted without a division, except in the case of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, when the yeas were 50, and the noes 25, and in the case of William, Earl of Salisbury, when the yeas were 23, and the ñoes 20, and in the cases of Ireton and Harrison who were rejected. The two following entries in their own journals throw more light on the character of this assembly than all the pamphlets written against them by their most deadly enemies. "The question being propounded, that Henry Ireton,

1 Commons' Journals, Die Martis, 13 Feb., 1648.

2 Whitelock's Memorials, p. 381, folio, London, 1732.