n the contest, How
they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy riotous persons, and
choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers
for them: this is advice by a man who _saw_. Fact answers, if you see
into Fact! Cromwell's _Ironsides_ were the embodiment of this insight of
his; men fearing God; and without any other fear. No more conclusively
genuine set of fighters ever trod the soil of England, or of any other
land.

Neither will we blame greatly that word of Cromwell's to them; which was
so blamed: "If the King should meet me in battle, I would kill the
King." Why not? These words were spoken to men who stood as before a
Higher than Kings. They had set more than their own lives on the cast.
The Parliament may call it, in official language, a fighting "_for_ the
King;" but we, for our share, cannot understand that. To us it is no
dilettante work, no sleek officiality; it is sheer rough death and
earnest. They have brought it to the calling forth of _War_; horrid
internecine fight, man grappling with man in fire-eyed rage--the
_infernal_ element in man called forth, to try it by that! _Do_ that
therefore; since that is the thing to be done.--The successes of
Cromwell seem to me a very natural thing! Since he was not shot in
battle, they were an inevitable thing. That such a man, with the eye to
see, with the heart to dare, should advance, from post to post, from
victory to victory, till the Huntingdon farmer became, by whatever name
you might call him, the acknowledged Strongest Man in England, virtually
the King of England, requires no magic to explain it!--

Precisely here, however, lies the rub for Cromwell. His other
proceedings have all found advocates, and stand generally justified; but
this dismissal of the Rump Parliament and assumption of the
Protectorship, is what no one can pardon him. He had fairly grown to be
King in England; Chief Man of the victorious party in England: but it
seems he could not do without the King's Cloak, and sold himself to
perdition in order to get it. Let us see a little how this was.

England, Scotland, Ireland, all lying now subdued at the feet of the
Puritan Parliament, the practical question arose, What was to be done
with it? How will you govern these Nations, which Providence in a
wondrous way has given-up to your disposal? Clearly those hundred
surviving members of the Long Parliament, who sit there as supreme
authority, cannot continue forever