and make the Nation happy. But this must be by knowing the true state of affairs! [Hear!] You are yet, like the People under Circumcision, but raw.1 Your Peaces are but newly made. And it's a maxim not to be despised, "Though peace be made, yet it's interest that keeps peace;"-and I hope you will not trust such peace except so far as you see interest upon it. 'But all settlement grows stronger by mere continuance.' And therefore I wish that you may go forward, and not backward; and 'in brief' that you may have the blessing of God. upon your endeavours! It's one of the great ends of calling this Parliament, that the Ship of the Commonwealth may be brought into a safe harbour; which, I assure you, it will not be, without your counsel and advice.

You have great works upon your hands. You have Ireland to look unto. There is not much done to the Planting thereof. though some things leading and preparing for it are. It is a great business to settle the Government of that Nation upon fit terms, such as will bear that work2 through.-You have had laid before you some considerations, intimating your peace with several foreign States. But yet you have not made peace with all. And if they should see we do not manage our affairs with that wisdom which becomes us,-truly we may sink under disadvantages, for all that's done. [Truly, your Highness!] And our enemies will have their eyes open, and be revived, if they see animosities amongst us; which indeed will be their great advantage.

I do therefore persuade you to a sweet, gracious and holy understanding of one another, and of your business. [Alas!] Concerning which you had so good counsel this day; which as it rejoiced my heart to hear, so I hope the Lord will imprint it upon your spirits, wherein you shall have my Prayers. [Prayers, your Highness?—If this be not “cant," what a noble thing is it, O reader! Worth thinking of, for a moment.]

Having said this, and perhaps omitted many other material things through the frailty of my memory, I shall exercise plain1 See, in Joshua, v. 2-8, the whole Jewish Nation circumcised at once. So, too, your Settlements of Discord are yet but indifferently cicatrised.

2 Of planting Ireland with persons that will plough and pray, instead of quarrel and blarney!

ness and freeness with you; and say, That I have not spoken these things as one who assumes to himself dominion over you; but as one who doth resolve to be a fellow-servant with you to the interest of these great affairs, and of the People of these Nations. I shall trouble you no longer; but desire you to repair to your House, and to exercise your own liberty in the choice of a Speaker, that so you may lose no time in carrying on your work.*

At this Speech, say the old Newspapers, 'all generally seemed abundantly to rejoice, by extraordinary expressions and hums at 'the conclusion,'-Hum-m-m! His Highness withdrew into the 'old House of Lords, and the Members of Parliament into the Par'liament House. His Highness, so soon as the Parliament were gone to their House, went back to Whitehall, privately in his 'barge, by water.'

This Report of Speech Second, taken by one that stood near,' and 'published to prevent mistakes,' may be considered as exact enough in respect of matter, but in manner and style it is probably not so close to the Original Deliverance as the foregoing Speech was. He who stood near' on this occasion seems to have had some conceit in his abilities as a Reporter; has pared off excrescences, peculiarities,—somewhat desirous to present the Portrait of his Highness without the warts. He, or his Parliamentary-History Editor and he, have, for one thing, very arbitrarily divided the Discourse into little fractional paragraphs; which a good deal obstruct the sense here and there; and have accordingly been disregarded in our Transcript. Our changes, which, as before, have been insignificant, are indicated wherever they seem to have importance or physiognomic character,-indicated too often perhaps for the reader's convenience. As to the meaning, I have not anywhere remained in doubt, after due study. The rough Speech when read faithfully becomes transparent, every word of it; credible, calculated to produce conviction, every word of it;—and that I suppose is or should be, as our impatient Commentator says, 'the definition of a good Speech. Other "good speeches,” continues he, 'ought to be spoken in Bedlam;-unless, indeed, 'you will concede them Drury Lane, and admittance one shilling. Spoken in other localities than these, without belief on the

*Old Pamphlet cited above: reprinted in Parliamentary History, xx. 318-33. 1 Cromwelliana, p. 147; see also Guibon Goddard, Member for Lynn (in Burton, i. Introd. p. xviii.).

speaker's part, or hope or chance of producing belief on the hearer's-Ye Heavens, as if the good-speeching individual were some frightful Wood-and-leather Man, made at Nürnberg, and tenanted by a Devil; set to increase the Sum of Human Madness, instead of lessening it—'—But we here cut short our impatient Commentator.-The Reporter of Cromwell, we may say for ourselves, like the painter of him, has not to suppress the warts, the natural rugged physiognomy of the man; which only very poor tastes would exchange for any other. He has to wash the natural face clean, however; that men may see it, and not the opaque mass of mere soot and featureless confusions which, in two Centuries of considerable Stupidity in regard to that matter, have settled there.

SPEECH III.

THIS First Protectorate Parliament, we said, was not successful. It chose, judiciously enough, old Lenthall for Speaker; appointed, judiciously enough, a Day of general Fasting:—but took, directly after that, into constitutional debate about Sanctioning the Form of Government (which nobody was specially asking it to 'sanction'); about Parliament and Single Person; powers of Single Person and of Parliament; Coördination, Subordination; and other bottomless subjects;-in which getting always the deeper the more it puddled in them, inquiry or intimation of inquiry rose not obscurely in the distance, Whether this Government should be by a Parliament and Single Person? These things the honourable gentlemen, with true industry, debated in Grand Committee,' from Weight in the morning till eight at night, with an hour for refresh'ment about noon,' debates waxing ever hotter, question ever more abstruse, through Friday, Saturday, Monday; ready, if Heaven spared them, to debate it further for unlimited days. Constitutional Presbyterian persons, Use-and-wont Neuters; not without a spicing of sour Republicans, as Bradshaw, Haselrig, Scott, to keep the batch in leaven.

His Highness naturally perceived that this would never do, not this;-sent therefore to the Lord Mayor, late on Monday night I think, to look after the peace of the City; to Speaker Lenthall, that he must bring his people to the Painted Chamber before

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going farther and early on Tuesday morning, poor Mr. Guibon Goddard, Member for Lynn, just about to proceed again, from the Eastern parts, towards his sublime constitutional day's-work, is overwhelmed by rumours, ‘That the Parliament is dissolved; that, for certain, the Council of State, and a Council of War, had sat ' together all the Sabbath-day before, and had then contrived this 'Dissolution!'

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'Notwithstanding,' continues Guibon, 'I was resolved to go to 'Westminster, to satisfy myself of the truth; and to take my share ' of what I should see or learn there. Going by water to West'minster, I was told that the Parliament-doors were locked up, and guarded with soldiers, and that the Barges were to attend 'the Protector to the Painted Chamber. As I went, I saw two 'Barges at the Privy Stairs.' River and City in considerable emotion. Being come to the Hall, I was confirmed in what I had 'heard. Nevertheless I did purpose not to take things merely upon trust; but would receive an actual repulse, to confirm my 'faith. Accordingly, I attempted up the Parliament stairs; but a guard of Soldiers was there, who told me," There was no passage 'that way; the House was locked up, and command given to give no admittance to any ;—if I were a Member, I might go into the 'Painted Chamber, where the Protector would presently be." The Mace had been taken away by Commissary-General Whalley. 'The Speaker and all the Members were walking up and down the 'Hall, the Court of Requests, and the Painted Chamber; expecting 'the Protector's coming. The passages there likewise were guarded ' with soldiers.'1

No doubt about it, therefore, my honourable friend! Dissolution, or something, is not far. Between nine and ten, the Protector arrived, with due escort of Officers, halberts, Life-guards; took his place, covered, under' the state' as before, we all sitting bareheaded on our benches as before; and with fit salutation spake to us; as follows. 'Speech of an hour and a half long;' taken in characters by the former individual who ' stood near;' audible still to modern men. Tuesday morning, 12th September 1654; a week and a day since the last Speech here.

In this remarkable Speech, the occasion of which and the Speaker of which are very extraordinary, an assiduous reader, or 'modern hearer,' will find Historical indications, significant shadowings-forth both of the Protectorate and the Protector; which, considering whence they come, he will not fail to regard as documentary in those matters. Nay perhaps, here for the first time, if he read with real industry, there may begin to paint itself for him, on 1 Ayscough Mss., printed in Burton's Diary, i. Introd. p. xxxiii.

the void Dryasdust Abyss, hitherto called History of Oliver, some dim adumbration of How this business of Assuming the Protectorate may actually have been. It was, many years ago, in reading these Speeches, with a feeling that they must have been credible when spoken, and with a strenuous endeavour to find what their meaning was, and try to believe it, that to the present Editor the Commonwealth, and Puritan Rebellion generally, first began to be conceivable. Such was his experience.—

But certainly the Lord Protector's place, that September Tuesday, 1654, is not a bed of roses! His painful asseverations, appeals and assurances have made the Modern part of his audience look, more than once, with questioning eyes. On this point, take from a certain Commentator sometimes above cited from, and far oftener suppressed, the following rough words:

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'Divers persons who do know whether I lie in that," says the 'Lord Protector. What a position for a hero, to be reduced con'tinually to say He does not lie!-Consider well, nevertheless, 'What else could Oliver do? To get on with this new Parliament was clearly his one chance of governing peaceably. To wrap himself up in stern pride, and refuse to give any explanation: would 'that have been the wise plan of dealing with them? Or the stately and not-so-wise plan? Alas, the wise plan, when all lay yet as an experiment, with so dread issues in it to yourself and 'the whole world, was not very discoverable. Perhaps not quite ' reconcilable with the stately plan, even if it had been discovered!' And again, with regard to the scheme of the Protectorship, which his Highness says was done by "the Gentlemen that undertook to frame this Government," after divers days consulting, and without the least privity of his: You never guessed what they were doing, your Highness? Alas, his Highness guessed 'it,—and yet must not say, or think, he guessed it. There is something sad in a brave man's being reduced to explain himself 'from a barrel-head in this manner! Yet what, on the whole, will 'he do? Coriolanus curled his lip, and scowled proudly enough on the sweet voices: but Coriolanus had likewise to go over to 'the Volscians; Coriolanus had not the slightest chance to govern by a free Parliament in Rome! Oliver was not prepared for these extremities; if less would serve. Perhaps in Oliver there is something of better than "silent pride?" Oliver will have to explain himself before God Most High, ere long;—and it will 'not stead him there, that he went wrong because his pride, his 'personal dignity," his &c. &c. were concerned.--Who would govern men! “Oh, it were better to be a poor fisherman," ex'claimed Danton, "than to meddle with governing of men!" "I

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