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full as intolerant, and still more inquisitorial. The men who, for conscience-sake, had joined hand and heart with the Presbyterians in putting down one ecclesiastical tyranny, were not of a temper to suffer their allies to raise another in its stead. Not only the religious association of Independent churches, but every other variety and description of Christian sects, and even those maintaining opinions which were not Christian, the Deists, or heathens as Cromwel learnt to call them in his detestation and fear of their dangerous rejection of enthusiasm, all these sects and sets of men became interested alike in resisting the establishment of a new and rigorous church which they did not acknowledge. Hence, naturally, they were led to oppose the political ascendancy of the party which desired to inflict upon them an obligation of religious conformity more onerous and tyrannical than that from which they had escaped. These banded and various sects, which agreed in opposition to the Presbyterians, all came to be known under one political term, as Independents, and appropriately enough; since independence of all compulsive uniformity of worship and belief, and a full toleration for themselves mutually, and for others in general, were the bonds of their union. The political necessity of resisting the Presbyterians formed them into a political party: the more moderate were then, as usual in faction, drawn in to proceed all lengths with the more violent; and the latitude of opinion, which the bolder spirits of the party transferred from their religion to their politics, made republicans of them all.

It has been the principal business of Mr. Godwin in this second volume to relate the full maturity, the gradual progress, and the final issue of the interesting struggle between these two memorable parties; and he has certainly executed his undertaking with great earnestness, animation, and natural fervour. But all idea of finding him impartial between these two popular factions, and still more between their common cause and that of the King, we must really leave most completely out of the question. That Mr. Godwin himself imagines that he has conducted his narrative without passion or bias we can indeed readily believe; and he has evidently designed to render his work only a monument of his attachment to the principles of civil and religious liberty. But it is quite amusing to observe the perseverance and zeal with which, throughout the whole volume, he has fought the cause of a favourite side; exaggerating their patriotism and talents, apologising for their errors in conduct and judgment, and defending their most unjustifiable actions. His work is one of the most palpable examples of historical prejudice that we have ever encountered, and we will add, also, one of the most harmless. For it is impossible to entertain a doubt of his honesty: facts he has stated with scrupulous fidelity, and his obliquities are those only of reasoning and deduction.

The Independents are the objects, from first to last, of his affection and praise. His admiration of the leaders of that faction appears to be founded principally upon their bold resolution and remarkable talents, their republican tenets, and their maxims of universal toleration. What other congenial qualities between their spirit and his own may have warmed his attachment we know not: but reviewing the whole conduct of those men after the suppression of the royal cause, we confess we can ourselves find little to commend in them beyond their generous and consistent maintenance of the doctrines of toleration. A minority of fanatics and infidels in a free national legislature, who invoked the aid of an insolent army to overpower and eject the majority of their own body, who subjected themselves and their country to the despotism of that army, and who finished, whether as dupes or accomplices, by plunging the state into an anarchy that left it a prey to a military leader, these men would seem to deserve little of our sympathy or respect.

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The Presbyterians and their leaders, on the other hand, are the objects of Mr. Godwin's sarcasm and contempt. The latter were men of ordinary capacities;' they are stigmatised as loving to call themselves the moderate party; they endeavoured to disband the army, which had conquered their rights for them, and were as intolerant and exclusive in their religious doctrines as the displaced hierarchy. Yet Mr. Godwin might have remarked that, however inferior the measure of their abilities to those of their opponents, the Presbyterian leaders had the penetration to foresee the dangerous qualities of that army, which their rivals courted to their own destruction; and we find that all the talents of their republican adversaries did not prevent them from being over-reached and enslaved by the General of their choice. The political moderation of the Presbyterians few will be disposed, with Mr. Godwin, to impute to them as a crime. They had originally embarked in the glorious cause of freedom, not for the subversion, but for the constitutional restraint, of the monarchy. When that object seemed secured by the overthrow of the royalists, they appear to have been sincerely desirous of an accommodation with Charles; and there is every reason to believe that nothing but the bad faith and duplicity of that unfortunate monarch prevented this desirable settlement of the kingdom.

The charge of intolerance against the Presbyterians is of course better founded; and here, having, unlike Mr. Godwin, no political partialities to gratify, we shall not hesitate to pronounce that their conduct in this respect is the foulest taint on their cause. For after having, as it has often been observed, themselves been the victims of the tyranny of the episcopal church, they no sooner acquired the ascendancy than they desired to inflict on all who dissented from their doctrines precisely the same penalties which they had suffered themselves; and they would thus have committed the same violence

on the consciences of their brethren which they had so justly opposed in the King. However, as Mr. Godwin has well observed, we should be upon our guard against judging men of other times by notions which have since been gradually ripened into maxims.' There can be no doubt that the Presbyterians acted from conscience in insisting upon religious uniformity, and they were not singular in their times. The doctrine of toleration was contrary to the spirit of that age, and had been recognised as little by any of the reformed communities as by the Catholic church; it would even have been held for a criminal indulgence by the sincere of all parties. The history of toleration would be a singular and interesting subject; and the Independents would receive in it the glorious distinction of having originated the practice if not the doctrine itself. Altogether, in summing up the political conduct of the Presbyterians and Independents, we should say, that the former were inconsistent in this great point, but consistent in all others; and that the latter were consistent throughout in their support of religious liberty, but inconsistent in every thing else. Under the pretence of resisting only the unconstitutional tyranny of the King, they had secretly been labouring to erect a democracy: in the pursuit of that object they were guilty of every species of criminal violence; and so far from establishing the Utopian freedom which they coveted, they contributed only to the ruin of all liberty under a military despotism.

Perhaps the spirit of partiality for every measure of the Independent or republican party, in which Mr. Godwin has composed his history, cannot be better illustrated than by considering the light in which he has viewed their employment of the army in overawing and subjugating the parliamentary majority. If there be one maxim more trite and obvious than another in the constitution of a free state, it is that which condemns and prohibits the interference of an armed force with the measures of the legislature. How has Mr. Godwin treated the violation of this essential law of freedom? In introducing the subject of the discontents of the army on the order for disbandment, and their mutinous approach to the metropolis, he observes, (p. 276.) that the man must have been without the heart of a soldier who could have thought that some expression of dissatisfaction and demur was not required at so extraordinary a crisis. The question was, what expression should be adopted that should not lay them open to the contempt and revenge of their enemies, and should yet leave a door open for reconciliation and atonement?' And again, of the formation of the convention of officers and the representative body of agitators from among the soldiery, we are told: This proceeding on the part of the army has been idly represented, by some historians, as an ambitious attempt to place themselves on a level with the Parliament. The General's council of officers, say they, resembled the House of Peers, while the persons chosen by the soldiers in general out

of each troop or company were considered as answering to the House of Commons. But this is one of the gratuitous fictions with which history has been so often disfigured. We may be sure that the House of Lords (which had recently incurred so much odium, and within twenty months afterwards was entirely abolished,) was not at this time in so good odour with the military, that, how ever they might wish to engross the direction of the state into their hands, they should in any degree have aspired to imitate the old constitution of the realm, and have erected two houses of legisla ture in their military republic.' How far this military republic was designed, not merely to rival, but to subdue the Parliament, as historians have idly represented,' was sufficiently shown, we imagine, by the event. But proceed we to Mr. Godwin's more elaborate vindication of the mutiny of the army, or rather of the acts of the Independent leaders by whom their revolt was prompted.

It will ever be a momentous and a difficult question upon the principles of moral rectitude and public justice, how Cromwel and the leaders of the army ought to have acted on this occasion. Nothing can be more indubitable than the unworthiness of the proceeding of the ruling party in parliament. There was nothing direct and manly in whatever they did. Their favourite reasoning was, that the war was at an end, and there was no further occasion for the army. But their whole conduct belied their assertion. The royal party was not so beaten down as not to be an object of the most incessant jealousy. The majority in parliament had voted to keep up in England a large body of horse, and a considerable number of garrisons. They had voted a large army to be transported to subdue the resistance of Ireland. They were looking out on all sides for recruits and new soldiers. Their quarrel was not with an army, but with the army which had obtained the victory that the votaries of liberty so much desired. They feared them as the friends of toleration, and the enemies of that lordly and oppressive junto which at this time ruled the nation. They were anxious not merely to disperse them, but to put upon them every species of obloquy and injustice. They refused to provide for their arrears, and were desirous to load them with disrespect and affronts. If provocation could justify resistance, never could any resistance be more amply justified than that of the followers of Fairfax.

But this is not the view in which the subject ought to be considered. Anger and passion are not the principles by which nations and states should be guided; and men to whose care the interests of others are intrusted must discard these feelings, or they will prove themselves unworthy of the situations they occupy. The sole consideration to which conscientious public men were bound to turn their attention then, and which calls for the judgment of an impartial posterity now, is what conduct the general welfare demanded from those by whose proceedings that welfare would be materially affected. Ought they to have yielded to the injustice which the parliament was desirous of putting upon them? There is a point at which submission ceases to be a duty, and resistance is a virtue. Was that point arrived in the present instance? It is a dangerous undertaking to set ourselves in open defiance of the highest constituted authority, in a country which boasts of its freedom.

The function of the King, the executive government of England, had been shaken to its basis, by the civil war, and the issue of that war. The Parliament had won itself immortal honour by the deliberate and majestic tone which had marked its proceedings in the commencement of the contest: it was still the same assembly. After putting down the authority of the King, was it wise, was it justifiable, to proceed to put down the authority of parliament? The House of Commons was a body chosen by a numerous set of constituents, was the authentic representative of the nation. What was the army? Certainly not a body constituted for the purposes of legislation. They were for the most part an assemblage of volunteers, who had been encouraged, and endowed with authorities by the Parliament, to fight their battles. If they attempted to decide, and overbear the measures of the legislature in civil affairs, they were, for that purpose, merely a self-constituted authority. Nothing but the most uncontroulable necessity could justify, if that could justify, their interference for such purposes.

Perilous however as the crisis was at this period, and much as the system of our political government had been shaken, this in one point of view furnishes a new consideration, persuading the army to hold out firmly for the points which they deemed inseparable from the public welfare. In ordinary times the authorities which custom has sanctioned carry with them the greatest weight. The present parliament had sat already for nearly seven years, a period unprecedented by any former example, and was therefore not such a parliament as the English constitution recognised. They had engrossed the executive, and all other public and political authorities within their own sphere. They had abundant means to corrupt others, and to corrupt themselves. They had existed long enough to have afforded a regular arena for the machinations of party; and the period of their dissolution was yet unproclaimed.'—

Another particular which well deserves to be considered in order to enable us to make a just judgment of the present crisis of public affairs, is the state of debate and divisions in the House of Commons. If the parliament had been decidedly Presbyterian, and the army Independent, this would have produced a still more portentous state of things than that which actually existed. But the struggle had been violent and severe between the two parties from the time of the new model in 1644 to the present. For a considerable period the interest of the Independent party prevailed; but, towards the close of the year 1646, and particularly during the negociation with the Scots for the surrender of Charles, and the evacuation of England by the Scottish army, the Presbyterians gained the upper hand. Still the contest from day to day was sharp, and the Presbyterian measures were carried by the smallest possible majorities. It was a mighty effort on both sides; and numerous, no doubt, were the consultations and canvassings by means of which the Independents expected to make the cause of the army, of justice, and liberality, triumphant. But they were reserved to perpetual disappointment. They had the troops at hand, by means of which in a moment they could secure the victory. They had only to throw the sword into the scale. Should they for ever submit to injustice, intrigue, and persecution, because in the counting of numbers they were still a little inferior to their adversaries? It is for the impartial and disinterested judge of man and of human affairs to decide this question. The ascendancy of the Presbyterians was so very slight, that Cromwel

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