hich they intended forever to retain the substance, however they
might bestow on others the empty shadow or appearance. They elected a
committee of twenty-three persons, of whom seven were officers. These
they pretended to invest with sovereign authority; and they called
them a "committee of safety." They spoke every where of summoning a
parliament chosen by the people; but they really took some steps towards
assembling a military parliament, composed of officers elected from
every regiment in the service.[*]

* Ludlow.

Throughout the three kingdoms there prevailed nothing but the
melancholy fears, to the nobility and gentry of a bloody massacre and
extermination; to the rest of the people, of perpetual servitude beneath
those sanctified robbers, whose union and whose divisions would be
equally destructive and who, under pretence of superior illuminations,
would soon extirpate, if possible, all private morality, as they had
already done all public law and justice, from the British dominions.

During the time that England continued in this distracted condition,
the other kingdoms of Europe were hastening towards a composure of those
differences by which they had so long been agitated. The parliament,
while it preserved authority, instead of following the imprudent
politics of Cromwell, and lending assistance to the conquering Swede,
embraced the maxims of the Dutch commonwealth, and resolved, in
conjunction with that state, to mediate by force an accommodation
between the northern crowns. Montague was sent with a squadron to
the Baltic, and carried with him, as ambassador, Algernon Sidney, the
celebrated republican. Sidney found the Swedish monarch employed in the
siege of Copenhagen, the capital of his enemy; and was highly pleased
that, with a Roman arrogance, he could check the progress of royal
victories, and display in so signal a manner the superiority of freedom
above tyranny. With the highest indignation, the ambitious prince was
obliged to submit to the imperious mediation of the two commonwealths.
"It is cruel," said he, "that laws should be prescribed me by parricides
and pedlers." But his whole army was enclosed in an island, and might be
starved by the combined squadrons of England and Holland. He was obliged
therefore to quit his prey, when he had so nearly gotten possession of
it; and having agreed to a pacification with Denmark, he retired into
his own country, where he soon after died.

The war