ndifferent to our Cause, merely looked at it and
submitted to it. It is in weight and force, not by counting of heads,
that we are the majority! And now with your Formulas and Reform Bills,
the whole matter, sorely won by our swords, shall again launch itself
to sea; become a mere hope, and likelihood, _small_ even as a
likelihood? And it is not a likelihood; it is a certainty, which we
have won, by God's strength and our own right hands, and do now hold
_here_. Cromwell walked down to these refractory Members; interrupted
them in that rapid speed of their Reform Bill;--ordered them to
begone, and talk there no more.--Can we not forgive him? Can we not
understand him? John Milton, who looked on it all near at hand, could
applaud him. The Reality had swept the Formulas away before it. I
fancy, most men who were realities in England might see into the
necessity of that.

The strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of Formulas and
logical superficialities against him; has dared appeal to the genuine
fact of this England, Whether it will support him or not? It is
curious to see how he struggles to govern in some constitutional way;
find some Parliament to support him; but cannot. His first Parliament,
the one they call Barebones's Parliament, is, so to speak, a
_Convocation of the Notables_. From all quarters of England the
leading Ministers and chief Puritan Officials nominate the men most
distinguished by religious reputation, influence and attachment to the
true Cause: these are assembled to shape-out a plan. They sanctioned
what was past; shaped as they could what was to come. They were
scornfully called _Barebones's Parliament_, the man's name, it seems,
was not _Barebones_, but Barbone,--a good enough man. Nor was it a
jest, their work; it was a most serious reality,--a trial on the part
of these Puritan Notables how far the Law of Christ could become the
Law of this England. There were men of sense among them, men of some
quality; men of deep piety I suppose the most of them were. They
failed, it seems, and broke down, endeavouring to reform the Court of
Chancery! They dissolved themselves, as incompetent; delivered-up
their power again into the hands of the Lord-General Cromwell, to do
with it what he liked and could.

What _will_ he do with it? The Lord-General Cromwell, 'Commander-in
Chief of all the Forces raised and to be raised;' he hereby sees
himself, at this unexampled juncture, as it were the one