Part 12

In criticising Cromwell, however, we must remember that generally in such cases an even greater share of blame must attach to the nation than to the man. Free government is only for nations that deserve it; and they lose all right to it by licentiousness, no less than by servility. If a nation cannot govern itself, it makes comparatively little difference whether its inability springs from a slavish and craven distrust of its own powers, or from sheer incapacity on the part of its citizens to exercise self-control and to act together. Self-governing freemen must have the power to accept necessary compromises, to make necessary concessions, each sacrificing somewhat of prejudice, and even of principle, and every group must show the necessary subordination of its particular interests to the interests of the community as a whole. When the people will not or cannot work together; when they permit groups of extremists to decline to accept anything that does not coincide with their own extreme views; or when they let power slip from their hands through sheer supine indifference; then they have themselves chiefly to blame if the power is grasped by stronger hands. Yet, while keeping all this in mind, it must not be forgotten that a great and patriotic leader may, if the people have any capacity for self-government whatever, help them upwards along their hard path by his wise leadership, his wise yielding to even what he does not like, and his wise refusal to consider his own selfish interests. A people thoroughly unfit for self-government, as were the French at the end of the eighteenth century, are the natural prey of a conscienceless tyrant like Napoleon. A people like the Americans of the same generation can be led along the path of liberty and order by a Washington. The English people, in the middle of the seventeenth century, might have been helped to entire self-government by Cromwell, but were not sufficiently advanced politically to keep him from making himself their absolute master if he proved morally unequal to rising to the Washington level; though doubtless they would not have tolerated a man of the Napoleonic type.

The Assembly gathered in July, 1653. It was called the “Barebones” Parliament in derision, because one of its members—a Puritan leather-merchant—was named “Praise-God Barbon.” The members were men of high character, of intense religious fervor, and, for the most part, of good social standing. They were actuated by sincere conviction, but they had no political training whatever. They were not accustomed to make government move; they were theorists, rather than doers. Religious fervor, or mere fervor for excellence in the abstract, is a great mainspring for good work in politics as in war, but it is no substitute for training, in either civil or military life; and if not accompanied by sound common-sense and a spirit of broad tolerance, it may do as much damage as any other mighty force which is unregulated.

On July 4th, Cromwell opened the Assembly with a long speech, which, toward the end, became a true Puritan sermon; a speech which had in it a very high note of religion and morality, but which showed a growing tendency in Oliver’s mind to appeal from the judgment of men to what he esteemed the judgment of Heaven, whenever he thought men were wrong. Now, it is very essential that a man should have in him the capacity to defy his fellows if he thinks that they are doing the work of the Devil, and not the work of the Lord; but it is even more essential for him to remember that he must be most cautious about mistaking his own views for those of the Lord; and also to remember that as the Lord’s work is accomplished through human instruments, and as these can only be used to advantage by remembering that they are human, and, therefore, imperfect, in the long run a man can do nothing of permanence, save by joining his zeal to sound judgment, moderation, and the desire to accomplish practical results.

The Assembly of Puritan notables was no more competent to initiate successful self-government in England than a Congress of Abolitionists, in 1860, would have been competent to govern the United States. They did not lack in lofty devotion to their ideals, but their methods were impractical. Cromwell professed to have resigned his power into their hands, and they went at their work in a spirit of high religious enthusiasm. The “instrument,” under which they were summoned, had provided that their authority should be transferred to another assembly elected under their directions; in other words, they were to form a constitutional Convention. They undertook a host of reforms, largely in the right direction. Among other things, they proposed the abolition of the Court of Chancery, the establishment of civil marriage, the abolition of tithes, and of lay patronage. The clergy and the lawyers were cast into a frenzy of alarm over these proposals, and the landed proprietors became very uneasy lest some of their own unjust vested interests should suffer.

Now, all this was most excellent in point of moral purpose, just as it would have been absolutely right, from the abstract ethical stand-point, if the Constitution of 1789, or the Republican Convention of 1860, had declared for the abolition of slavery in all the States. Of course, if the Constitution had made such a declaration, it would never have been adopted, and the English-speaking people of North America would have plunged into a condition of anarchy like that of the after-time South American Republics; while, if the Republican platform of 1860 had taken such a position, Lincoln would not have been elected, no war for the Union would have been waged, and instead of slavery being abolished, it would have been perpetuated in at least one of the confederacies into which the country would have been split. The Barebones Parliament was too far ahead of the times, too indifferent to results, and too impatient of the limitations and prejudices of its neighbors. Its members were reformers, who lost sight of the fact that a reform must be practicable in order to make it of value. They excited the utmost suspicion in the community at large, and Cromwell, whose mind was in many respects very conservative, and who was an administrator rather than a constructive statesman, shared the general uneasiness. He shrank from the acts of the Barebones Parliament just as he had shrunk from the levelling tendencies of the Republicans. The leaders of both had gone too far in the direction of speculative reform. Cromwell erred on the other side, and did not go far enough. It is just as necessary for the practical man to remember that his practical qualities are useless, or worse than useless, unless he joins with them that spirit of striving after better things which marks the reformer, as it is for this same reformer to remember that he cannot give effective expression to his desire for a higher life save by following rigidly practical ways.

Cromwell, in his opening address to the Convention, had been carried away by his religious enthusiasm, and in a burst of strange, rugged eloquence had bid his hearers remember that they must “hold themselves accountable to God only;” must own their call to be from Him, and must strive to bring about God’s rule upon earth. When they took his words literally he became heartily uneasy, as did the great bulk of Englishmen; for, of course, there were limitless interpretations to be put as to the proper way of being “owned” by God, and Oliver was not in the least inclined to accept the interpretation adopted by the Barebones Parliament. He wished administrative reform in Church and State, but he had little sympathy with what he deemed revolutionary theories, whether good or bad.

The Convention gradually grew conscious that it had no support in popular sympathy, and dissolved of its own motion, after having named a Council of State, which drew up a remarkable Constitution under the name of the “Instrument of Government.” This Instrument was adopted by Cromwell and the Council of Officers, and under it a new Parliament was convened. Even yet, Cromwell, and at least the majority of the army, shrank from abandoning every effort at constitutional rule in favor of the naked power of the sword. Nevertheless, Cromwell had even less fondness for the rule of a Parliament elected under any conditions he was able to devise. He realized that the majority of the nation was against him, and dreaded lest it might take steps toward the rehabilitation of the monarchy. In his address to the Barebones Convention he had dwelt with special emphasis upon the fact that a Parliament elected merely by the majority might not be nearly so suitable for doing the Lord’s work as such an assembly as that he had convened.

In short, all his qualities, both good and bad, tended to render the forms and the narrowly limited powers of constitutional government irksome to him. His strength, his intensity of conviction, his delight in exercising powers for what he conceived to be good ends; his dislike of speculative reforms and his inability to appreciate the necessity of theories to a practical man who wishes to do good work; his hatred of both King and oligarchy, while he utterly distrusted a popular majority; his tendency to insist upon the superiority of the moral law, as he saw it, to the laws of mankind round about him—all these tendencies worked together to unfit him for the task of helping a liberty-loving people on the road toward freedom.

The Instrument of Government was a very remarkable document. It was a written constitution. Cromwell and his soldiers desired, like Washington and his fellow-members of the Constitutional Convention which framed the government of the United States, to have the fundamental law of the land put in shape where it would be accessible to all men, and where its terms would not be open to doubt. Such a course was absolutely necessary if a free government, in the modern sense, was to be established on radically new lines. It has not been rendered necessary in the free England of to-day, because, very fortunately, England has been able to reach her freedom by evolution, not revolution.

The Instrument of Government confided the executive power to a Lord Protector and Council; Cromwell was named as the first Protector. The legislative power was assigned without restriction to a Parliament elected by constituencies formed on a new and equitable franchise, there being a sweeping redistribution of seats. Parliament could pass a Bill over the Protector’s veto, and was to meet once in three years, for at least five months; but it had little control over the executive, save that with it rested the initiative in filling vacancies in the Council. The Protector was allotted a certain fixed sum, which made him largely independent of the Parliament’s action. Nevertheless, the Protector was under real constitutional control. Religious liberty was secured for all congregations which did not admit “papacy or prelacy,” the Episcopalians and Roman Catholics being excluded from this right just as they were excluded from the right of voting, rather as enemies to the Commonwealth than because of their mere religious beliefs. They were regarded as what would now be called, in the political terminology of continental Europe, “irreconcilables”; and the mass and the Prayer-Book were both prohibited. Until the first Parliament met, which was to be on the anniversary of the Battle of Dunbar, on September 3, 1654, the Protector and Council were to issue ordinances with the force of law.

The Constitution thus had very many points of difference from that under which the United States grew into a great nation. Yet it ranks with it, rather than with the system of Parliamentary supremacy which was ultimately adopted in England. It was, of course, less popular, in the true sense, than the government of either the United States or Great Britain at the present moment. Oliver, later on, insisted on what he called the “Four Fundamentals,” which answered to what we now style Constitutional Rights. His position was strictly in accord with the American, as opposed to the English, theory of embodying, by preference in some written document, propositions which neither the law-making body nor the executive could modify. It was not to be expected that he should hit on the device of a Supreme Court to keep guard over these propositions.

On December 16, 1653, Oliver was installed at Westminster, as Lord Protector. The judges, the army, the fleet, the mass of Independents, and the bulk of well-to-do citizens, concurred in the new departure; for the Protectorship gave stability, and the election of the new Parliament the assurance of liberty. There were plenty of opponents, however. The Royalists were implacable. The exiled House of Stuart, with a baseness of which their great opponent was entirely incapable, sought to compass his assassination. They could in no other way hope to reach the man whom they dared not look in the face on the field of battle. Plot after plot was formed to kill the Protector, but the plotters were invariably discovered and brought to justice; while every attempt at open insurrection was stamped out with the utmost ease. To the Royalist malcontents were added the extreme fanatics, the ultra-reformers of every type—religious, political, and social. These were, at the time, more dangerous than the Royalists, for they numbered supporters in the army, including some who had been prominent friends of Cromwell up to this time, like General Harrison. It was necessary, therefore, to arrest some of the most turbulent agitators, including preachers, and to deprive certain officers of their commissions.

The Protector and his Council acted wisely in their ordinances, redressing in practical shape many grievances. The Barebones Parliament had striven to abolish the Court of Chancery outright, and to hand its power over to the judges of the Common Law, which would merely have aggravated the existing hardships by checking the growth of the principle of equity. Oliver acted more conservatively: in fact, altogether too conservatively; but still he did something. In the Church government, also, a good deal was accomplished by the appointment of commissioners of good character to supervise the ministers, while allowing each to organize his congregation on any lines he chose—Presbyterian, Congregationalist, or Baptist. Dissenters were permitted to form separate congregations—“gathered churches” in the phrase of the day—if they so desired. Of course, this was not by any means complete religious toleration, but it was a nearer approach to it than any government in Europe, with the possible exception of the Dutch, had yet sanctioned, and it was so far in advance of the general spirit of the time that the new Parliament—a really representative body—took sharp exception to it. In point of religious toleration Oliver went just as far as the people of his day would let him—farther than any other ruler of the century was willing to go, save only Henry IV. of France—and Henry IV. really believed in nothing, and so could easily be tolerant, while Cromwell’s zealous faith was part of the very marrow of his being.

Cromwell also concluded peace with the Dutch. Before the Long Parliament was dissolved it had become evident that the navy would ultimately conquer this peace for England; but the stubborn Dutch had to undergo several additional defeats before they would come to terms. Blake, the great admiral, had no particular admiration for Cromwell, but finally threw in his lot with him on the ground that the fleet had no concern with politics, and should limit itself strictly to the effort “to keep foreigners from fooling us.” Monk was the admiral most in view in the later stages of the Dutch War. When it was over, he was sent back to keep the Highlands in order, which he and his fellow-Cromwellians did, with a thoroughness not afterward approached for a century. Scotland was now definitely united to England.

The new Parliament consisted of 400 members from England, 30 from Scotland, and 30 from Ireland. They were elected by a general suffrage, based on the possession of property to the value £200. The Parliament thus gathered was representative in a very wide sense. Nearly two hundred years were to elapse before any other as truly representative was to sit in England. The classes whose inclusion would certainly have made trouble were excluded; and, while the suffrage had been extended, and gross inequalities of representation abolished, there had been no such revolutionary action as suddenly to introduce masses of men unaccustomed to the exercise of self-government. Indeed, the house had arbitrarily erased from its roll of membership the names of a few ultra-Republicans. It was chiefly Cromwell’s own fault that he failed to get along with this Parliament, and, therefore, failed to put the government on a permanent basis of orderly liberty.

At the beginning, everything seemed to go well. He opened the Parliament with one of those noteworthy speeches of which some seventeen have been preserved; speeches in the proper sense, unquestionably better when spoken to listeners than when read by critics, but instinct with the rough power of the speaker, permeated with religious fervor and sincere striving after the right; and even where the reasoning is most wrong-headed, containing phrases and sentiments which show the keenest insight into the needs of the moment, and the needs of eternity as well. The sentences are often very involved, it being quite evident that the speeches were not written out, not even deliberately thought out, in advance; for Oliver, even as he spoke, kept dropping and rejecting such of his half-finished utterances as did not give sufficiently accurate or vehement expression to his thought. Yet they contain abundance of the loftiest thought, expressed in language which merely gains strength from its rude, vigorous homeliness. For generations after Cromwell’s death, the polished cynics and dull pedants, who abhorred and misunderstood him, spoke of his utterances with mixed ridicule and wrath: Hume hazarding the opinion that if his speeches, letters, and writings, were gathered together they would form “one of the most nonsensical collections the world had ever seen.” We could far better afford to lose every line Hume ever wrote than the speeches of Cromwell.

In his opening address he pointed out that what the nation most needed was healing and settling; and in a spirit of thoroughly English conservatism, denounced any merely revolutionary doctrines which would do away with the security of property, or would give the tenant “as liberal a fortune” as the landlord. In religious matters also, he condemned those who could do nothing but cry: “Overturn! Overturn!! Overturn!!!” and together with his praise of what had been done, and of the body to which he spoke, he mingled much advice, remarking: “I hope you will not be unwilling to hear a little again of the sharp as well as of the sweet.” He exhorted them to go to work in sober earnest; to remedy in practical shape any wrongs, and to join with him in working for good government. Unfortunately, he made the mental reservation that he should be himself the ultimate judge of what good government was.

Equally unfortunately, there was in the House a body of vehement Republicans who at once denied the legal existence of either Council or Protector, on the ground that the Long Parliament had never been dissolved. Of course such an argument was self-destructive, as it told equally against the legality of the new Parliament in which they sat. Parliament contented itself with recognizing the Instrument of Government as only of provisional validity, and proceeded to discuss it, clause by clause, as the groundwork of a new Constitution. It was unanimously agreed that Cromwell should retain his power for five years, but Parliament showed by its actions that it did not intend to leave him in a position of absolute supremacy. Instantly Oliver interfered, as arbitrarily as any hereditary King might have done.

He first appeared before the Parliament, and in an exceedingly able speech announced his willingness to accept a Parliamentary constitution, provided that it contained four fundamentals not to be overturned by law. The fundamentals were, first, that the country was to be governed by a single person, by a single executive, and a Parliament; second, that Parliaments were not to make themselves perpetual; third, that liberty of conscience should be respected; fourth, that the Protector and Parliament should have joint power over the militia.

All four propositions were sound. The first two were agreed to at once, and the third also, though with some reluctance, the Parliament being less liberal than the Protector in religious matters. Over the control of the soldiers there was irreconcilable difference.

Cromwell was not content with arguments. He would not permit any member to enter the House without signing an engagement not to alter the government as it had been settled; that is, every member had to subscribe to the joint government of the Protector and the Parliament. A hundred members refused to sign. Three-fourths of the House did sign, and went on with their work.

Until the assembling of this Parliament, every step that Oliver had taken could be thoroughly justified. He had not played the part of a usurper. He had been a zealous patriot, working in the interests of the people; and he had only broken up the Long Parliament when the Long Parliament had itself become an utterly unrepresentative body. He had then shown his good faith by promptly summoning a genuinely representative body. It is possible to defend him even for excluding the hundred members who declined to subscribe to his theory of the fundamentals of government. But it is not possible to excuse him for what he now did. Parliament, as it was left after the Extremists had been expelled, stood as the only elective body which it was possible to gather in England that could in any sense be called representative, and yet agree to work with Cromwell. Had Cromwell not become cursed with the love of power; had he not acquired a dictatorial habit of mind, and the fatal incapacity to acknowledge that there might be righteousness in other methods than his own, he could certainly have avoided a break with this Parliament. His splitting with it was absolutely needless. It agreed to confirm his powers for five years, and, as it happened, at the end of that time he was dead. Even had he lived there could be no possible excuse for refusing such a lease of power, on the ground that it was too short; for it was amply long enough to allow him to settle whatever was necessary to settle.