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Authority left in England, nothing between England and utter Anarchy
but him alone. Such is the undeniable Fact of his position and
England's, there and then. What will he do with it? After
deliberation, he decides that he will _accept_ it; will formally, with
public solemnity, say and vow before God and men, "Yes, the Fact is
so, and I will do the best I can with it!" Protectorship, Instrument
of Government,--these are the external forms of the thing; worked-out
and sanctioned as they could in the circumstances be, by the Judges,
by the leading Official people, 'Council of Officers and Persons of
interest in the Nation:' and as for the thing itself, undeniably
enough, at the pass matters had now come to, there _was_ no
alternative but Anarchy or that. Puritan England might accept it or
not; but Puritan England was, in real truth, saved from suicide
thereby!--I believe the Puritan People did, in an inarticulate,
grumbling, yet on the whole grateful and real way, accept this
anomalous act of Oliver's; at least, he and they together made it
good, and always better to the last. But in their Parliamentary
_articulate_ way, they had their difficulties, and never knew fully
what to say to it!--

Oliver's second Parliament, properly his _first_ regular Parliament,
chosen by the rule laid-down in the Instrument of Government, did
assemble, and worked;--but got, before long, into bottomless questions
as to the Protector's _right_, as to 'usurpation,' and so forth; and
had at the earliest legal day to be dismissed. Cromwell's concluding
Speech to these men is a remarkable one. So likewise to his third
Parliament, in similar rebuke for their pedantries and obstinacies.
Most rude, chaotic, all these Speeches are; but most earnest-looking.
You would say, it was a sincere helpless man; not used to _speak_ the
great inorganic thought of him, but to act it rather! A helplessness
of utterance, in such bursting fulness of meaning. He talks much about
'births of Providence:' All these changes, so many victories and
events, were not forethoughts, and theatrical contrivances of men, of
_me_ or of men; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in calling
them so! He insists with a heavy sulphurous wrathful emphasis on this.
As he well might. As if a Cromwell in that dark huge game he had been
playing, the world wholly thrown into chaos round him, had _foreseen_
it all, and played it all off like a precontrived puppetshow by wood