be might have found him sleeping at the hours when other men are ordinarily waking, rather than waking for those ends of his when other men were ordinarily asleep. How diligent the wicked are, the Scripture often tells us, "Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood," Isai. lix. 7. "He travels with iniquity," Psal. vii. 14. "He deviseth mischief upon his bed," Psal. xxxiv. 4. "They search out iniquity, they accomplish a diligent search," Psal. Ixiv. 6. and in a multitude of other places. And would it not seem ridiculous, to praise a wolf for his watchfulness, and for his indefatigable industry in ranging all night about the country, whilst the sheep, and perhaps the shepherd, and perhaps the very dogs too are all asleep; | the empire; it was boldly done, to set the me tropolis of the whole world on fire, and undauntedly play upon his harp whilst he saw it burning; I could reckon up five hundred boldnesses of that great person (for why should not he, too, be called so?) who wanted, when he was to die, that courage which could hardly have failed any woman in the like necessity. "It would look (I must confess) like envy,or too much partiality, if I should say that personal kind of courage had beea deficient in the man we speak of; I am confident it was not and yet I may venture, I think, to affirm, that no man ever bore the honour of so many victories, at the rate of fewer wounds and dangers of his own body; and though his valour might perhaps have given a just pretension to one of the first charges in an army, it could not certainly be a sufficient ground for a title to the command of three nations. The chartreux wants the warning of a bell "What then shall we say? that he did all this by witchcraft? He did so, indeed, in a great measure, within. But, truly, and unpassionately reflecting upon the advantages of his person, which might be thought to have produced those of his fortune, I can espy no other but extraordinary diligence and infinite dissimulation; and believe he was exalted above his nation, partly by his own faults, but chiefly for ours. "And, if the diligence of wicked persons be so much to be blamed, as that it is only an emphasis and exaggeration of their wickedness, I see not how their courage can avoid the same censure. If the undertaking bold, and vast, and unreasonable designs can deserve that ho- "We have brought him thus briefly(not through nourable name, I am sure, Faux and his fel- all his labyrinths) to the supreme usurped autholow gun-powder friends, will have cause to rity; and because you say it was great pity he pretend, though not an equal, yet at least the did not live to command more kingdoms, be next place of honour: neither can I doubt but pleased to let me represent to you, in a few words, if they too had succeeded, they would have how well I conceive he governed these. And we found their applauders and admirers. It was will divide the consideration into that of his fobold unquestionably for a man in defiance of reign and domestic actions. The first of his foall human and divine laws (and with so little reign, was a peace with our brethren of Holland probability of a long impunity) so publicly (who were the first of our neighbours that God and so outrageously to murder his master; chastised for having had so great a hand in the it was bold with so much insolence and affront encouraging and abetting our troubles at home): to expel and disperse all the chief partners who would not imagine at first glimpse that this of his guilt, and creators of his power; it was had been the most virtuous and laudable deed, bold to violate so openly and so scornfully that his whole life could have made any parade all acts and constitutions of a nation and af- of? but no man can look upon all the circumterwards even of his own making; it was bold stances, without perceiving, that it was purely to assume the authority of calling, and bolder the sale and sacrificing of the greatest advanyet of breaking, so many parliaments: it was tages that this country could ever hope, and was bold to trample upon the patience of his own ready to reap, from a foreign war, to the private and provoke that of all neighbouring countries; interests of his covetousness and ambition, and it was bold, I say, above all boldnesses, to usurp the security of his new and unsettled usurpation. this tyranny to himself: and impudent above No sooner is that danger past, but this Beatus all impudences, to endeavour to transmit it to Pacificus is kindling a fire in the northern world, his posterity. But all this boldness is so far and carrying a war two thousand miles off westfrom being a sign of manly courage, (which wards. Two millions a year (besides all the vails dares not transgress the rules of any other vir- of his protectorship) is as little capable to suffice tue) that it is only a demonstration of brutish now either his avarice or his prodigality, as madness or diabolical possession. In both which the two hundred pounds were, that he was last cases there used frequent examples to ap-born to. He must have his prey of the whole pear of such extraordinary force as may justly seem more wonderful and astonishing than the actions of Cromwell; neither is it stranger to believe that a whole nation should not be able to govern him and a mad army, than that five or six men should not be strong enough to bind a distracted girl. There is no man ever succeeds in one wickedness, but it gives him the boldness to attempt a greater. It was boldly done of Nero to kill his mother, and all the chief nobility of Indies both by sea and land, this great alligator. To satisfy our Anti-Solomon (who has made silver almost as rare as gold, and gold as precious stones in his new Jerusalem) we must go, ten thousand of his slaves, to fetch him riches from his fantastical Ophir. And, because his flatterers brag of him as the most fortunate prince (the Faustus, as well as Sylla, of our nation, whom God never forsook in any of his undertakings) I desire them to consider, how, since the English name was ever heard of, it never received so great and so infamous a blow as under the imprudent conduct of this unlucky Faustus; and herein let me admire the justice of God in this circumstance, that they who had enslaved their country (though a great army, which I wish may be observed by ours with trembling) should be so shamefully defeated by the hands of forty slaves. It was very ridiculous to see how prettily they endeavoured to hide this ignominy under the great name of the Conquest of Jamaica; as if a defeated army should have the impudence to brag afterwards of the victory, because, though they had fled out of the field of battle, yet they quartered that night in a village of the enemy's. The war with Spain was a necessary consequence of this folly; and how much we have gotten by it let the custom-house and exchange inform you; and, if he please to boast of the taking a part of the silver fleet, (which indeed nobody else but he, who was the sole gainer, has cause to do) at least, let him give leave to the rest of the nation (which is the only loser) to complain of the loss of twelve hundred of her ships. "But because it may here perhaps be answered, that his successes nearer home have extinguished the disgrace of so remote miscarriages, and that Dunkirk ought more to be remembered for his glory, than St. Domingo for his disadvantage; I must confess, as to the honour of the English courage, that they were not wanting upon that occasion (excepting only the fault of serving at least indirectly against their master) to the upholding of the renown of their warlike ancestors. But for his particular share of it, who sate still at home, and exposed them so frankly abroad, I can only say, that, for less money than he in the short time of his reign exacted from his fellowsubjects, some of our former princes (with the daily hazard of their own persons) have added to the dominion of England, not only one town, but even a greater kingdom than itself. And this being all considerable as concerning his enterprizes abroad, let us examine in the next place, how much we owe him for his justice and good government at home. "And, first, he found the commonwealth (as they then called it) in a ready stock of about 800,000 pounds; he left the commonwealth (as he had the impudent raillery still to call it) some two millions and an half in debt. He found our trade very much decayed indeed, in comparison of the golden times of our late princes; he left it as much again more decayed than he found it : and yet not only no prince in England, but no tyrant in the world, ever sought out more base or infamous means to raise monies. I shall only instance in one that he put in practice, and another that he attempted, but was frighted from the execution (even he) by the infamy of it. That which he put in practice was decimation; which was the most impudent breach of all public faith By decimation, is here meant, not the putting to death of every tenth man (which is the usual sense of this term), but the levying of the tenth penny on the estates of the Royalists. The word is so used by sir John Denhami. HURD. that the whole nation had given, and all private capitulations which himself had made, as the nation's general and servant, that can be found out (I believe) in all history, from any of the most barbarous generals of the most barbarous people. Which, because it has been most excellently and most largely laid open by a whole book written upon that subject, I shall only desire you here to remember the thing in general, and to be pleased to look upon that author, when you would recollect all the particulars and circumstances of the iniquity. The other design, of raising a present sum of money, which he violently pursued, but durst not put in execution, was by the calling in and establishment of the Jews at London; from which he was rebuked by the universal outcry of the divines, and even of the citizens too, who took it ill, that a considerable number at least amongst themselves were not thought Jews enough by their own Herod. And for this design, they say, he invented (oh Antichrist ! Πονηρὸν and ὁ Πονηρὸς ! to sell St. Paul's to them for a synagogue, if their purses and devotions could have reach'd to the purchase. And this indeed, if he had done only to reward that nation, which had given the first noble example of crucifying their king, it might have had some appearance of gratitude: but he did it only for love of their mammon; and would have sold afterwards for as much more St. Peter's (even at his own Westminster) to the Turks for a mosquito. Such was his extraordinary piety to God, that he desired he might be worshipped in all manners, excepting only that heathenish way of the Common-prayer book. But what do I speak of his wicked inventions for getting money; when every penny, that for almost five years he took every day from every man living in England, Scotland, and Ireland, was as much robbery, as if it had been taken by a thief upon the highways? Was it not so? or can any man think that Cromwell, with the assistance of his forces and moss-troopers, had more right to the command of all men's purses, than he might have had to any one's whom he had met and been too strong for upon a road? And yet, when this came, in the case of Mr. Coney3, to be disputed by a legal trial, he (which was the highest act of tyranny that ever was seen in England) not only discouraged and threatened, but violently imprisoned the counsel of the plaintiff; that is, he shut up the law itself a close prisoner, that no man might have relief from, or access to it. And it ought to be remembered, that this was done by those men, who a few years before had so bitterly decried, and openly opposed, the king's regular and formal way of proceeding in the trial of a little ship-money. But, though we lost the benefit of our old courts of justice, it cannot be denied that he set up new ones; and such as they were, that as no virtuous prince before would, so no ill one durst, erect. What, have we lived so many hundred years under such a form of justice as has been able regularly to punish all men that offended against it; and is it so deficient just now, that we must seek out new ways how to proceed 3 Which the reader may see in lord Claren don, H. R. vol. iii. fol. p. 596. HURD. against offenders? The reason, which can only be given in nature for a necessity of this, is, because those things are now made crimes, which were never esteemed so in former ages; and there must needs be a new court set up to punish that, which all the old ones were bound to protect and reward. But I am so far from declaiming (as you call it) against these wickednesses (which if I should undertake to do, I should never get to the peroration), that you see I only give a hint of some few, and pass over the rest, as things that are too many to be numbered, and must only be weighed in gross. Let any man show me (for, though I pretend not to much reading, I will defy him in all history) let any man show me (I say) an example of any nation in the world (though much greater than ours) where there have, in the space of four years, been made so many prisoners, only out of the endless jealousies of one tyrant's guilty imagination. I grant you, that Marius and Sylla, and the accursed triumvirate after them, put more people to death; but the reason, I think, partly was, because in these times that had a mixture of some honour with their madness, they thought it a more civil revenge against a Roman, to take away his life, than to take away his liberty. But truly in the point of murder too, we have little reason to think that our late tyranny has been deficient to the examples that have ever been set it in other countries. Our judges and our courts of justice have not been idle: and, to omit the whole reign of our late king (till the beginning of the war), in which no drop of blood was ever drawn but from two or three ears, I think the longest time of our worst princes scarce saw many more executions, than the short one of our blest reformer. And we saw, and smelt in our open streets (as I marked to you at first) the broiling of human bowels as a burnt-offering of a sweet savour to our idol; but all murdering, and all torturing (though after the subtilest invention of his predecessors of Sicily) is more humane and more supportable, than his selling of Christians, Englishmen, gentlemen; his selling of them (oh monstrous! oh incredible) to be slaves in America. If his whole life could be reproached with no other action, yet this alone would weigh down all the multiplicity of crimes in any of our tyrants; and I dare only touch, without stopping or insisting upon, so insolent and so execrable a cruelty, for fear of falling into so violent (though a just) passion, as would make me exceed that temper and moderation, which I resolve to observe in this discourse with you. "These are great calamities; but even these are not the most insupportable that we have endured; for so it is, that the scorn, and mockery, and insultings of an enemy, are more painful than the deepest wounds of his serious fury. This man was wanton and merry (unwittily and ungracefully merry) with our sufferings: he loved to say and do senseless and fantastical things, only to show his power of doing or saying any thing It would ill befit mine, or any civil mouth, to repeat those words which he spoke concerning the most sacred of our English laws, the Petition of Right, and Magna Charta 4. To In the case of Coney, before mentioned, day, you should see him ranting so wildly, that nobody durst come near him: to morrow, flinging of cushions, and playing at snowballs, with his servants. This month, he assembles a parliament, and professes himself with humble tears to be only their servant and their minister; the next month, he swears by the living God, that he will turn them out of doors, and he does so, in his princely way of threatening, bidding them, "Turn the buckles of their girdles behind them." The representative of whole, nay of three whole nations, was in his esteem so contemptible a meeting, that he thought the affronting and expelling of them to be a thing of so little conse quence, as not to deserve that he should advise with any mortal man about it. What shall we call this? boldness or brutishness? rashness or phrensy? There is no name can come up to it and therefore we must leave it without one. Now a parliament must be chosen in the new manner, next time in the old form, but all cashiered still after the newest mode. Now he will govern by major-generals, now by one house, now by another house, now by no house; now the freak takes him, and he makes seventy peers of the land at one clap (extempore, and stans pede in uno); and, to manifest the absolute power of the potter, he chooses not only the worst clay he could find, but picks up even the dirt and mire, to form out of it his vessels of honour. It was said anciently of Fortune, that, when she had a mind to be merry and to divert herself, she was wont to raise up such kind of people to the highest dignities. This son of Fortune, Cromwell, (who was himself one of the primest of her jests) found out the true haut goust of this pleasure, and rejoiced in the extravagance of his ways, as the fullest demonstration of his uncontrolable sovereignty. Good God! What have we scen? and what have we suffered? what do all these actions signify? what do they say aloud to the whole nation, but this (even as plainly as if it were proclaimed by heralds through the streets of London), "You are slaves and fools, and so I will use you!" "These are briefly a part of those merits which you lament to have wanted the reward of more kingdoms, and suppose that, if he had lived longer, he might have had them: which I am so far from concurring to, that I believe his seasonable dying to have been a greater good-fortune to him, than all the victories and prosperities of his life. For he seemed evidently (methinks) to be near the end of his deceitful glories; his own army grew at last as weary of him as the rest of the people; and I never passed of late before his palace (his, do I call it? I ask God and the king pardon) but I never passed of late before Whitehall, without reading upon the gate of it, "Mene Mene, Tekel Upharsin 5." But it pleased God to take him from the ordinary courts of men, and juries of his peers, to his own high court of justice; which being more merciful than ours below, there is a little room yet left for the hope of his friends, if he have any; though the outward unrepentance of his death afford but small materials for the work of charity, especially if he designed even then to entail his own injustice upon his children, § Dan, v. 25. and, by it, inextricable confusions and civil wars upon the nation. But here's at last an end of him. And where 's now the fruit of all that blood and calamity, which his ambition has cost the world? Where is it? Why, his son (you will say) has the whole crop: I doubt, he will find | it quickly blasted; I have nothing to say against the gentleman, or any living of his family; on the contrary, I wish him better fortune than to have a long and unquiet possession of his master's inheritance. Whatsoever I have spoken against his father, is that which I should have thought (though decency, perhaps, might have hindered me from saying it) even against mine own, if I had been so unhappy, as that mine, by the same ways, should have left me three kingdoms." Here I stopt; and my pretended protector, who, I expected, would have been very angry, fell a laughing; it seems at the simplicity of my discourse, for thus he replied: "You seem to pretend extremely to the old obsolete rules of virtue and conscience, which makes me doubt very much whether from this vast prospect of three kingdoms you can show me any acres of your own. But these are so far from making you a prince, that I am afraid your friends will never have the contentment to see you so much as a justice of peace in your own country. For this, I perceive, which you call virtue, is nothing else but either the frowardness of a Cynic, or the laziness of an Epicurean. I am glad you allow me at least artful dissimulation and unwearied diligence in my hero; and I assure you, that he, whose life is constantly drawn by those two, shall never be misled out of the way of greatness. But I see you are a pedant and Platonical statesman, a theoretical commonwealth's-man, an Utopian dreamer. Was ever riches gotten by your golden mediocrities? or the supreme place attained to by virtues that must not stir out of the middle? Do you study Aristotle's politics, and write, if you please, comments upon them; and let another but practise Machiavel: and let us see then which of you two will come to the greatest preferment. If the desire of rule and superiority be a virtue (as sure I am it is more imprinted in human nature than any of your lethargical morals; and what is the virtue of any creature, but the exercise of those powers and inclinations which God has infused into it!) if that (I say) be virtue, we ought not to esteem any thing vice, which is the most proper, if not the only, means of attaining of it: It is a truth so certain, and so clear, He strook him down; and so (said he) so fell Hence, coward fears; for the first blood so spilt, So well advanc'd, 'twas pity here he staid! One brother's death, what do I mean to name, He would have gone on, I perceived, in his blasphemies, but that by God's grace I became so bold, as thus to interrupt him: “ I understand. now perfectly (which I guessed at long before) what kind of angel and protector you are, and, though your style in verse be very much mended since you were wont to deliver oracles, yet your doctrine is much worse than ever you had formerly (that I heard of) the face to publish; whether your long practice with mankind has increased and improved your malice, or whether you think us in this age to be grown so impudently wicked, that there needs no more art or disguises to draw us to your party." "My dominion (said he hastily, and with a dreadful furious look) is so great in this world, and I am so powerful a monarch of it, that I need not be ashamed that you should know me; and, 7 This compliment was intended, not so much to the foregoing, as to the following verses; of which the author had reason to be proud, but, A remarkable testimony to the blameless as being delivered in his own person, could not se character of Richard Cromwell, properly make the paneygric. Hurd. that you may see I know you too, I know you to be an obstinate and inveterate malignant ; and for that reason I shall take you along with me to the next garrison of ours; from whence you shall go to the Tower, and from thence to the court of justice, and from thence you know whither." I was almost in the very pounces of the great bird of prey : When, lo, ere the last words were fully spoke, The frowns, with which he strook the trembling All smiles of human beauty did transcend ; Across his breast an azure ruban went, Or were, could not, alas! by me be known, I. OF LIBERTY. too after a forfeiture made by the rebellion of Adam. He takes so much care for the entire preservation of it, to us, that he suffers neither his providence nor eternal decree to break or inTHE liberty of a people consists in being govern- fringe it. Now for our time, the same God, to ed by laws which they have made themselves, whom we are but tenants at will for the whole, under whatsoever form it be of government: the requires but the seventh part to be paid to him, as liberty of a private man, in being master of his a small quit-rent, in acknowledgment of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with title. It is man only that has the impudence to the laws of God and of his country. Of this latter demand our whole time, though he never gave it, only we are here to discourse, and to enquire nor can restore it, nor is able to pay any consiwhat estate of life does best seat us in the posses-derable value for the least part of it. This birthsion of it. This liberty of our own actions, is such a fundamental privilege of human nature, that God himself, notwithstanding all his infinite power and right over us, permits us to enjoy it, and that right of mankind above all other creatures, some are forced by hunger to sell, like Esau, for bread and broth: but the greatest part of men make such a bargain for the delivery-up of themselves, |