that man whom I suppose you commend by irony.

"There would be no end to instance in the particulars of all his wickedness; but, to sum up a part of it briefly, What can be more extraordinarily wicked, than for a person, such as yourself, qualify him rightly, to endeavour not only to exalt himself above, but to trample upon, all his equals and betters? to pretend freedom for all men,and under the help of that pretence to make all men his servants? to take arms against taxes as scarce two hundred thousand pounds a year,and to raise them himself to above two millions? to quarrel for the loss of three or four ears, and to strike off three or four hundred heads? to fight against an imaginary suspicion of I know not what? two thousand guards to be fetched for the king, I know not from whence, and to keep up for himself no less than forty thousand? to pretend the defence of parliaments, and violently to dissolve all, even of his own calling, and almost choosing? to undertake the reformation of religion, and to rob it even to the very skin, and then to expose it naked to the rage of all sects and heresies? to set up counsels of rapine, and courts of murder? to fight against the king under a commission for him; to take him forcibly out of the hands of those for whom he had conquered him; to draw him into his net, with protestations and vows of fidelity, and when he had caught him in it, to butcher him, with as little shame, as conscience or humanity, in the open face of the whole world? to receive a commission for the king and parliament, to murder (as I said) the one, and destroy no less impudently the other? to fight against monarchy when he declared for it, and declare against it when he contrived for it in his own person? to abase perfidiously and supplant ingratefully his own general first, and afterwards most of those officers, who, with the loss of their honour, and hazard of their souls, had lifted him up to the top of his unreasonable ambitions? to break his faith with all enemies and with all friends equally; and to make no less frequent use of the most solemn perjuries, than the looser sort of people do of customary oaths? to usurp three kingdoms without any shadow of the least pretensions, and to govern them as unjustly as he got them? to set himself up as an idol (which we know, as St. Paul says, in itself is nothing), and make the very streets of London like the valley of Hinnon, by burning the bowels of men as a sacrifice to his Molochship? to seek to entail this usurpation upon his posterity, and with it an endless war upon the nation? and lastly, by the severest judgment of Almighty God, to die hardened, and mad, and unrepentant, with the curses of the present age, and the detestation of all to succeed?"

Though I had much more to say, (for the life of man is so short, that it allows not time enough to speak against a tyrant) yet, because I had a mind to hear how my strange adversary would behave himself upon this subject, and to give even the devil (as they say) his right and fair play in a disputation, I stopped here, and expected (not without the frailty of a little fear) Sir Thomas Fairfax,

that he should have broke into a violent passion in behalf of his favourite: but he on the contrary very calmly, and with the dove-like innocency of a serpent that was not yet warmed enough to sting, thus replied to me;

"It is not so much out of my affection to that person whom we discourse of, (whose greatness is too solid to be shaken by the breath of an oratory) as for your own sake (honest countryman) whom I conceive to err, rather by mistake than out of malice, that I shall endeavour to reform your uncharitable and unjust opinion. And, in the first place, I must needs put you in mind of a sentence of the most ancient of the heathen divines, that you men are acquainted withal,

Already to their punishment.

"But I take this to be the rule in the case,that, when we fix any infamy upon deceased persons, it should not be done out of hatred to the dead, but out of love and charity to the living: that the curses, which only remain in men's thoughts, and dare not come forth against tyrants (because they are tyrants) whilst they are so, may at least be for ever settled and engraven upon their memories, to deter all others from the like wickedness; which else, in the time of their foolish prosperity, the flattery of their own hearts, and of other men's tongues, would not suffer them to perceive. Ambition is so subtile a tempter, and the corruption of human nature so susceptible of the temptation, that a man can hardly resist it, be he never so much forewarned of the evil consequences; much less if he find not only the concurrence of the present, but the approbation too of following ages, which have the liberty to judge more freely. The mischief of tyranny is too great even in the shortest time that it can continue; it is endless and insupportable, if the example be to reign too; and if a Lambert must be invited to follow the steps of a Cromwell, as well by the voice of honour, as by the sight of power and riches. Though it may seem to some fantastically, yet was it wisely, done of the Syracusans, to implead with the forms of their ordinary justice, to condemn and destroy, even the statues of all their tyrants: if it were possible to cut them out of all history, and to extinguish their very names, I am of opinion that it ought to be done; but, since they have left behind them too deep wounds to be ever closed up without a scar, at least let us set such a mark upon their memory,

ful princes have been esteemed tyrants, by not containing themselves within the bounds of those laws which have been left them, as the sphere of their authority, by their fore-fathers, what shall we say of that man, who, having by right no power at all in this nation, could not content himself with that which had satisfied the most ambitious of our princes? nay, not with those vastly extended limits of sovereignty, which he (disdaining all which had been prescribed and observed before) was pleased (out of great modesty) to set to himself; not abstaining from rebellion and usurpation even against his own laws, as well as those of the nation?"

"Hold, friend, (said his highness, pulling me by my arm) for I see your zeal is transporting you again; whether the protector were a tyrant in the exorbitant exercise of his power, we shall see anon; it is requisite to examine, first, whether he were so in the usurpation of it. And I say, that not only he, but no man else, ever was, or can be so; and that for these reasons. First, because all power belongs only to God, who is the source and fountain of it, as kings are of all honours in their dominions. Princes are but his viceroys in the little provinces of this world; and to some he gives their places for a few years, to some for their lives, and to others (upon ends or deserts best known to himself, or merely for his undisputable good pleasure) he bestows, as it were, leases upon them, and their posterity, for such a date of time as is prefixed in that patent of their destiny, which is not legible to you men below. Neither is it more unlawful for Oliver to succeed Charles in the kingdom of England, when God so disposes of it, than it had been for him to have succeeded the lord Strafford in the lieutenancy of Ireland, if he had been appointed to it by the king then reigning. Men are in both the cases obliged to obey him whom they see actually invested with the authority, by that sovereign from whom he ought to derive it, without disputing or examining the causes, either of the removal of the one, or the preferment of the other. Secondly, because all power is attained, either by the election and consent of the people (and that takes away your objection of forcible intrusion); or else by a conquest of them (and that gives such a legal authority as you mention to be wanting in the usurpation of a tyrant); so that either this title is right, and then there are no usurpers, or else it is a wrong one, and then there are none else but usurpers, if you examine the original pretences of the princes of the world. Thirdly, (which, quitting the dispute in general, is a particular justification of his highness) the government of England was totally broken and dissolved, and extinguished by the confusions of a civil war; so that his highness could not be accused to have possessed himself violently of the ancient building of the commonwealth, but to have prudently and peaceably built up a new one out of the ruins and ashes of the former; and he, who after a deplorable shipwreck, can with extraordinary industry gather together the dispersed and broken planks and pieces of it, and with no less wonderful art and felicity so rejoin them, as to make a new vessel more tight and beautiful than the old one, de

serves, no doubt, to have the command of her (even as his highness had) by the desire of the seamen and passengers themselves. And do but consider, lastly, (for I omit a multitude of weighty things, that might be spoken upon this noble argument) do but consider seriously and impartially with yourself, what admirable parts of wit and prudence, what indefatigable diligence and invincible courage, must of necessity have concurred in the person of that man, who, from so contemptible beginnings (as I observed before) and through so many thousand difficulties, was able not only to make himself the greatest and most absolute monarch of this nation, but to add to it the entire conquest of Ireland and Scotland (which the whole force of the world, joined with the Roman virtue, could never attain to); and to crown all this with illustrious and heroical undertakings and successes upon all our foreign enemies: do but (I say again) consider this, and you will confess, that his prodigious merits were a better title to imperial dignity, than the blood of an hundred royal progenitors; and will rather lament that he lived not to overcome more nations than envy him the conquest and dominion of these."

"Whoever you are,” said I, (my indignation making me somewhat bolder) "your discourse, methinks, becomes as little the person of a tutelar angel, as Cromwell's actions did that of a protector. It is upon these principles, that all the great crimes of the world have been committed, and most particularly those which I have had the misfortune to see in my own time, and in my own country. If these be to be allowed, we must break up human society, retire into the woods, and equally there stand upon our guards against our brethren mankind, and our rebels the wild beasts. For, if there can be no usurpation upon the rights of a whole nation, there can be none most certainly upon those of a private person; and, if the robbers of countries be God's vicegerents, there is no doubt but the thieves and banditos, and murderers, are his under-officers. It is true which you say, that God is the source and fountain of all power; and it is no less true, that he is the creator of serpents, as well as angels; nor does his goodness fail of its ends, even in the malice of his own creatures. What power he suffers the Devil to exercise in this world, is too apparent by our daily experience; and by nothing more than the late monstrous iniquities which you dispute for, and patronize in England: but would you infer from thence, that the power of the Devil is a just and lawful one; and that all men ought, as well as most men do, obey him? God is the fountain of all powers; but some flow from the right hand (as it were) of his goodness, and others from the left hand of his justice; and the world, like an island between these two rivers, is sometimes refreshed and nourished by the one and sometimes over-run and ruined by the other; and (to continue a little farther the allegory) we are never overwhelmed with the latter, till, either by our malice or negligence, we have stopped and dammed up the former.

"But to come a little closer to your argument or rather the image of an argument, your similitude. If Cromwell had come to command in Ira.

land, in the place of the late lord Strafford, I should have yielded obedience, not for the equipage, and the strength, and the guards which he brought with him, but for the commission which he should first have showed me from our common sovereign that sent him; and, if he could have done that from God Almighty, I would have obeyed him too in England; but that he was so far from being able to do, that, on the contrary, I read nothing but commands, and even public proclamations, from God Almighty, not to admit

him.

"Your second argument is, that he had the same right for his authority, that is the foundation of all others, even the right of conquest. Are we then so unhappy as to be conquered by the person whom we hired at a daily rate, like a labourer, to conquer others for us? Did we furnish him with arms, only to draw and try upon our enemies (as we, it seems, falsely thought them) and keep them for ever sheathed in the bowels of his friends? Did we fight for liberty against our prince, that we might become slaves to our servant? This is such an impudent pretence, as neither he nor any of his flatterers for him had ever the face to mention. Though it can hardly be spokea or thought of without passion, yet I shall, if you please, argue it more calmly than the case deserves.

"The right, certainly, of conquest can only be exercised upon those against whom the war is declared, and the victory obtained. So that no whole nation can be said to be conquered, but by foreign force. In all civil wars, men are so far from stating the quarrel against their country, that they do it only against a person or party, which they really believe, or at least pretend, to be pernicious to it; neither can there be any just cause for the destruction of a part of the body, but when it is done for the preservation and safety of the whole. It is our country that raises men in the quarrel, our country that arms, our country that pays, them, our country that authorizes the undertaking, and by that distinguishes it from rapine and murder; lastly it is our country that directs and commands the army, and is indeed their general. So that to say, in civii wars, that the prevailing party conquers their country, is to say, the country conquers itself. And, if the general only of that party be the conqueror, the army, by which he is made so, is no less conquered than the army which is beaten, and have as little reason to triumph in that victory, by which they lose both their honour and liberty. So that, if Cromwell conquered any party, it was only that against which he was sent; and what that was must appear by his commission. It was (says that) against a company of evil counsellors, and disaffected persons, who kept the king from a good intelligence and conjunction with his people. It was not then against the people. It is so far from being so, that even of that party which was beaten, the conquest did not belong to Cromwell, but to the parliament which employed him in their service, or rather indeed to the king and parliament, for whose service (if there had been any faith in men's vows and protestations) the wars were undertaken. Merciful God! did the right of this

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miserable conquest remain then in his majesty ; and didst thou suffer him to be destroyed, with more barbarity than if he had been conquered even by savages and canibals? Was it for king and parliament that we fought; and has it fared with them just as with the army which we fought against, the one part being slain, and the other fled? It appears therefore plainly, that Cromwell was not a conqueror, but a thief and robber of the rights of the king and parliament, and an usurper upon those of the people. I do not here deny conquest to be sometimes (though it be very rarely) a true title; but I deny this to be a true conquest. Sure I am, that the race of our princes came not in by such a one. One nation may conquer another sometimes justly; and if it be unjustly, yet still it is a true conquest, and they are to answer for the injustice only to God Almighty (having nothing else in authority above them) and not as particular rebels to their country, which is, and ought always to be, their superior and their lord. If perhaps we find usurpation instead of conquest in the original titles of some royal families abroad, (as no doubt there have been many usurpers, before ours, though none in so impudent and execrable a manner) all I can say for them is, that their title was very weak, till, by length of time, and the death of all juster pretenders, it became to be the true, because it was the only one.

"Your third defence of his highness (as your highness pleases to call him) enters in most seasonably after his pretence of conquest; for then a man may say any thing. The government was broken; who broke it? It was dissolved; who dissolved it? It was extinguished; who was it, but Cromwell, who not only put out the light, but cast away even the very snuff of it? As if a man should murder a whole family, and then possess himself of the house, because it is better that he, than that only rats, should live there. Jesus God! (said I, and at that word I perceived my pretended angel to give a start and trembled, but I took no notice of it, and went on) this were a wicked pretension, even though the whole family were destroyed; but the heirs (blessed be God !) are yet surviving, and likely to out-live all heirs of their dispossessors, besides their infamy. Rode, caper, vitem, &c. There will be yet wine enough left for the sacrifice of those wild beasts, that have made so much spoil in the vineyard. But did Cromwell think, like Nero, to set the city on fire, only that he might have the honour of being founder of a new and more beautiful one? He could not have such a shadow of virtue in his wickedness; he meant only to rob more securely and more richly in midst of the combustion; he little thought then that he should ever have been able to make himself master of the palace, as well as plunder the goods of the commonwealth. He was glad to see the public vessel (the sovereign of the seas) in as desperate a condition as his own little canoe, and thought only, with some scattered planks of that great shipwreck, to make a better fisherboat for himself. But when he saw that, by the drowning of the master, (whom he himself treacherously knocked on the head, as he was swimming for his life) by the flight and dispersion of others,