ed, to make them pay the expenses to which their
mutinous disposition continually exposed the public. Without regard to
compositions, articles of capitulation, or acts of indemnity, all the
royalists, however harassed with former oppressions, were obliged anew
to redeem themselves by great sums of money; and many of them were
reduced by these multiplied disasters to extreme poverty. Whoever was
known to be disaffected, or even lay under any suspicion, though no
guilt could be proved against him, was exposed to the new exaction.

In order to raise this imposition, which commonly passed by the name of
decimation, the protector instituted twelve major-generals; and divided
the whole kingdom of England into so many military jurisdictions.[*]

* Parl. Hist. vol. xx. p. 433.

These men, assisted by commissioners, had power to subject whom they
pleased to decimation, to levy all the taxes imposed by the protector
and his council, and to imprison any person who should be exposed to
their jealousy or suspicion; nor was there any appeal from them but
to the protector himself and his council. Under color of these powers,
which were sufficiently exorbitant, the major-generals exercised an
authority still more arbitrary, and acted as if absolute masters of the
property and person of every subject. All reasonable men now concluded,
that the very mask of liberty was thrown aside, and that the nation was
forever subjected to military and despotic government, exercised not
in the legal manner of European nations, but according to the maxims of
Eastern tyranny. Not only the supreme magistrate owed his authority to
illegal force and usurpation; he had parcelled out the people into
so many subdivisions of slavery, and had delegated to his inferior
ministers the same unlimited authority which he himself had so violently
assumed.

A government totally military and despotic, is almost sure, after
some time, to fall into impotence and languor: but when it immediately
succeeds a legal constitution, it may, at first, to foreign nations
appear very vigorous and active, and may exert with more unanimity that
power, spirit, and riches, which had been acquired under a better form.
It seems now proper, after so long an interval, to look abroad to the
general state of Europe, and to consider the measures which England at
this time embraced in its negotiations with the neighboring princes.
The moderate temper and unwarlike genius of the two las