favourite of fortune, and whose extraordinary success
has been urged as a plea against the divine government, and a proof that
the kingdoms of this world are left to the disposal of Satan. Penetrate
the recesses of the tyrant's palace, and it will be seen that enormous
offences, after they have outstripped the power of human punishment,
visit, on the oppressor, their own atrocity, and revenge the wrongs of a
bleeding world by torments more insupportable than any which cruelty can
inflict on others.

Distrusting even his most faithful informers, and jealous of his own
creatures, Cromwell always endeavoured to see every thing with his own
eyes. A little before his unlamented death, two strangers visited the
prison where Neville and Dr. Beaumont were confined. One of them avowed
himself to be the Lord Whitlock, the other passed as his secretary. They
were both masked, and wore long cloaks to conceal their persons. The
secretary was furnished with writing materials; he placed himself at a
table, and affected only to take minutes of the conversation.

Whitlock began with upbraiding the national ingratitude, and
acknowledging its general indisposition to the Protector's vigorous and
successful administration. He insisted that His Highness wished to
conciliate all parties by a mild and impartial government, though the
ample means with which he was furnished, the tried fidelity of the army,
and the respect he was held in by foreign Potentates, prevented him from
needing the friendship of any. But being now past the meridian of life,
he was desirous of leaving the nation whom he had rendered great and
prosperous, in the possession of internal tranquillity. Though
irreconcileable from principle, he regarded the royalists as the most
respectable of his opponents, and "he had ever resisted the advice of
the fanatics, to cut them off by a general massacre." Whitlock then
expressed his hope, that the prisoners condemned the newly-broached
opinion that assassination was allowable, and were disposed to be quiet,
if not contented, under the present government, which would reward such
submission by relaxing the penal statutes now in force against them. Dr.
Beaumont spoke first, and declared that assassination was forbidden by
the general tenor of Scripture. The particular instances now so much
dwelt on, of Jael's killing Sisera, or Judith's Holofernes, could not be
urged in vindication of similar attempts. Both acts were committed
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