, indeed, were held to be scarcely within the
pale of Christian charity; but the clergy of the fallen Anglican Church
were suffered to celebrate their worship on condition that they would
abstain from preaching about politics. Even the Jews, whose public
worship had, ever since the thirteenth century, been interdicted, were,
in spite of the strong opposition of jealous traders and fanatical
theologians, permitted to build a synagogue in London.

The Protector's foreign policy at the same time extorted the ungracious
approbation of those who most detested him. The Cavaliers could scarcely
refrain from wishing that one who had done so much to raise the fame of
the nation had been a legitimate king; and the Republicans were forced
to own that the tyrant suffered none but himself to wrong his country,
and that, if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at least given her
glory in exchange. After half a century, during which England had been
of scarcely more weight in European politics than Venice or Saxony, she
at once became the most formidable power in the world, dictated terms of
peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of
Christendom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land
and sea, seized one of the finest West India islands, and acquired on
the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for the
loss of Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the
Protestant interest. All the Reformed churches scattered over Roman
Catholic kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian. The Huguenots
of Languedoc, the shepherds who, in the hamlets of the Alps, professed a
Protestantism older than that of Augsburg, were secured from oppression
by the mere terror of that great name. The Pope himself was forced to
preach humanity and moderation to popish princes; for a voice which
seldom threatened in vain had declared that, unless favor were shown to
the people of God, the English guns should be heard in the Castle of St.
Angelo. In truth, there was nothing which Cromwell had, for his own sake
and that of his family, so much reason to desire as a general religious
war in Europe. In such a war he must have been the captain of the
Protestant armies. The heart of England would have been with him. His
victories would have been hailed with a unanimous enthusiasm unknown in
the country since the rout of the Armada, and would have effaced the
stain which one act, condemned by