108 CHAPTER VII. QUESTION RESPECTING THE DISSOLUTION OF PAR- DEBATED. III. the disso lution of Character sent par BOOK THE most important question that at this time called for the discretion and judgment of the 1649. rulers of the state, was that which related to the Question respecting dismission of the present parliament and calling another. The vital principle of the English conparliament. stitution, or, perhaps it were better to say, of representative government, is in successive parliaments. The present house of commons had of the pre- sat for a period wholly unknown in our history. The critical state of affairs had rendered their protracted sitting necessary. The act declaring that this parliament could not be dissolved but by their own consent, was the corner-stone of all their public services, and of all the liberty that has since existed in this island. The legislature that had been guided in their original measures by Hampden and Pym, and that, after their early decease, had been worthily, and in an eminent liament. degree in their spirit, conducted by their successors, is perhaps, all things considered, the most illustrious assembly, whose acts are recorded in the history of the world. They had now completed all that originally they undertook. They had conquered the determined enemy of parliaments; they had finished the civil war; they had destroyed despotism-for he that had grasped the sceptre was no more; and his family, and even the idea of government to be vested in the hands of a single person, was publicly proscribed. All that remained to complete their glory, was for them to put an end to their authority, and tranquilly to deliver up their power into the hands of their successors. CH-AP. 1649. were called on to perform. To do this however with favourable auspices Duties they was itself a business surrounded with difficulties. further Monarchy was at an end; the house of lords was extinguished; it had been solemnly decreed that the commons of England in parliament assembled were the supreme authority. But all was yet in a state of convulsion and uncertainty. The tempest might be said to be over; but the atmosphere was loaded with threatening clouds, and the waves swelled this way and that with no equivocal tokens of uneasiness and turbulence. This was the task that it fell to the present possessors of the legislative power to perform; to produce that calm, to adopt all those preliminary measures, which might enable the present parliament safely III. 1649. Impedi had had to BOOK to deliver up the reins of political power to the next. They had advanced far to this end. They had erected a council of state, which comprised in its body much of what was most extraordinary in talents, and most unquestionable in public spirit and disinterested virtue, that was to be found in the nation. Their march had been impeded by ments they the question, which was started just in this point encounter. of time, of the council of agitators. That assembly had not once met since the autumn of 1647. The men who shewed themselves impatient for its revival professed no respect for the talents, the virtues, or the intentions of the present leaders. It may be asserted without temerity, that they had no skill in state-affairs, that they understood little of what belonged to social and political happiness, and neither comprehended nor considered the perilous circumstances under which the fortune and future welfare of their country were placed. They were the men who affirmed that the king ought to have been tried by a lord chief justice and a jury of twelve men, and who condemned the council of state, as a substitution of a body of forty tyrants instead of one. They would, without thought, reflection or doubt, have plunged every thing into instant confusion. It was necessary they should be put down. It was necessary that it should instantly be made known, that England was not to be delivered over to a council of private soldiers chosen by their brothers in the pre VII. 1649. ranks. This arduous task was accomplished with CHAP. the skill that marked all the measures of the sent leaders. A mutiny was encountered with celerity, firmness and clemency, which, if any one of these qualities had been wanting, would have spread like a conflagration, and have involved the whole country in one wide scene of unmingled anarchy. which rests upon the this crisis. As the real history of this period has never been Obscurity written, we are reduced at this distance of time to glean it rather from indications than from docu- history of ments, and to supply from patient industry, and what may almost be called, microscopical observations, that outline of counsels, which is in many other cases afforded by public declarations, or the private memoirs of some of the leading persons concerned. Nothing of this kind is now known to exista. Difficulties tended the which at dissolution It had been originally recommended in the Agreement of the People presented to the house of commons on the twentieth of January by Fairfax and his council of officers, that the present parlia- ment. ment should terminate its sittings on the thirtieth of April. But a variety of circumstances had prevented that recommendation from being carried into effect. The mutiny in the army had first shewn itself in an open form on the first of • Ludlow's Memoirs and Whitlocke's Memorials are wholly silent on the subject here treated of. III. 1649. Prelimi nary steps the subject. taken on BOOK March. Of course it had been known to exist, and had been traced in its indications and preliminaries by men so penetrating as Cromwel and his associates, before that time. On the fifteenth Cromwel had been named by the council to command in the war of Ireland, and to take with him twelve thousand men. The insurrection was extensively spread, and had called upon it the whole attention of government, at the very time that had been proposed for the dissolution of parliament. A measure therefore of so critical and momentous a nature could not have been executed at that time. The first of May is the day on which we trace the earliest mention of the subject in the Journals. It was then determined that the business respecting due elections and equal representatives should be taken into consideration on the third day following. It was mentioned again on the fourth and the fifth; and on the eleventh was revived in the shape of a debate on the question of putting a period to the present parliament, which was referred to a grand committee, or committee of the whole house. The committee sat on the fifteenth, and prepared a resolution, which was immediately after voted by the house, that, previously to the naming a certain time for the dissolution of parliament, consideration should be had of the succession of future parliaments, and the regulating their elections. This consideration was referred to a committee, consisting of Vane, Ireton, Scot, |