to sit. What is to be done?--It was a
question which theoretical constitution-builders may find easy to
answer; but to Cromwell, looking there into the real practical facts of
it, there could be none more complicated. He asked of the Parliament,
What it was they would decide upon? It was for the Parliament to say.
Yet the Soldiers too, however contrary to Formula, they who had
purchased this victory with their blood, it seemed to them that they
also should have something to say in it! We will not "For all our
fighting have nothing but a little piece of paper." We understand that
the Law of God's Gospel, to which He through us has given the victory,
shall establish itself, or try to establish itself, in this land!

For three years, Cromwell says, this question had been sounded in the
ears of the Parliament. They could make no answer; nothing but talk,
talk. Perhaps it lies in the nature of parliamentary bodies; perhaps no
Parliament could in such case make any answer but even that of talk,
talk! Nevertheless the question must and shall be answered. You sixty
men there, becoming fast odious, even despicable, to the whole nation,
whom the nation already calls "Rump" Parliament, _you_ cannot continue
to sit there; who or what, then, is to follow? "Free Parliament," right
of election, constitutional formulas of one sort or the other--the thing
is a hungry fact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured by
it! And who are you that prate of constitutional formulas, rights of
Parliament? You have had to kill your king, to make pride's purges, to
expel and banish by the law of the stronger whosoever would not let your
cause prosper: there are but fifty or threescore of you left there,
debating in these days. Tell us what we shall do; not in the way of
formula, but of practicable fact!

How they did finally answer, remains obscure to this day. The diligent
Godwin himself admits that he cannot make it out. The likeliest is, that
this poor Parliament still would not, and indeed could not, dissolve and
disperse; that when it came to the point of actually dispersing, they
again, for the tenth or twentieth time, adjourned it--and Cromwell's
patience failed him. But we will take the favorablest hypothesis ever
started for the Parliament; the favorablest, though I believe it is not
the true one, but too favorable.

According to this version: At the uttermost crisis, when Cromwell and
his officers were met on the one hand, and t