ons, gives much ground
for doubt and suspicion. It seems to me, that the circumstance of
Cromwell's life in which his abilities are principally discovered, is
his rising from a private station, in opposition to so many rivals, so
much advanced before him, to a high command and authority, in the army.
His great courage, his signal military talents, his eminent dexterity
and address, were all requisite for this important acquisition. Yet will
not this promotion appear the effect of supernatural abilities, when
we consider, that Fairfax himself, a private gentleman, who had not the
advantage of a seat in parliament, had, through the same steps,
attained even a superior rank, and, if endued with common capacity
and penetration, had been able to retain it. To incite such an army to
rebellion against the parliament, required no uncommon art or industry:
to have kept them in obedience had been the more difficult enterprise.
When the breach was once formed between the military and civil powers,
a supreme and absolute authority, from that moment, is devolved on the
general; and if he be afterwards pleased to employ artifice or policy,
it may be regarded, on most occasions, as great condescension, if not
as superfluous caution. That Cromwell was ever able really to blind or
overreach either the king or the republicans, does not appear: as they
possessed no means of resisting the force under his command, they were
glad to temporize with him, and, by seeming to be deceived, wait for
opportunities of freeing themselves from his dominion. If he seduced the
military fanatics, it is to be considered, that their interests and his
evidently concurred; that their ignorance and low education exposed them
to the grossest imposition; and that he himself was at bottom as frantic
an enthusiast as the worst of them; and, in order to obtain their
confidence, needed but to display those vulgar and ridiculous habits
which he had early acquired, and on which he set so high a value. An
army is so forcible, and at the same time so coarse a weapon, that
any hand which wields it, may, without much dexterity, perform any
operation, and attain any ascendant, in human society.

The domestic administration of Cromwell, though it discovers great
abilities, was conducted without any plan either of liberty or arbitrary
power: perhaps his difficult situation admitted of neither. His foreign
enterprises, though full of intrepidity, were pernicious to national
i