, as before, upon the truth of that
also. But I could not obtain what my soul longed for. And the
plain truth is, I did afterwards apprehend some more of
opinion, (such the differences of their judgment from mine,)
that it could not well be.

"I confess I am in some strait to say what I could say, and
what is true, of what then followed. I pressed the Parliament,
as a member, to period themselves; once and again, and again,
and ten, nay twenty times over. I told them, for I knew it
better than any one man in the parliament could know it,
because of my manner of life, which had led me every where up
and down the nation, thereby giving me to see and know the
temper and spirits of all men, and of the best of men--that the
nation loathed their sitting. I knew it. And so far as I could
discern, when they _were_ dissolved, _there was not so much as
the barking of a dog_, or any general or visible repining at
it.

"And that there was high cause for their dissolution, is most
evident: not only in regard there was a just fear of that
parliament's perpetuating themselves, but because it actually
was their design. Had not their heels been trod upon by
importunities from abroad, even to threats, I believe there
never would have been any thoughts of rising, or of going out
of that room, to the world's end. I myself was sounded, and by
no mean persons tempted; and proposals were made me to that
very end: that the parliament might be thus perpetuated; that
the vacant places might be supplied by new elections, and so
continue from generation to generation."

He proceeds to object to the measure which the Parliament was really
about to pass, that it would have established an uninterrupted
succession of Parliaments, that there would have been "a legislative
power always sitting," which would thereby have encroached upon the
executive power. The speech then enlarges on the general assent of the
people, of the army, of the judges, of the civic powers, to the
instrument of government, to the Protectorate, and on the implied
assent which they themselves had given by accepting their commissions
under it.

"And this being so, though I told you in my last speech that
you were a free Parliament, yet I thought it was understood
withal that I was the Protector, and the authority that called