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,
endeavoring 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
available 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,