superficial zeal and popular fumes that acted their
New Magistracy were cooled and spent in them, straight every one betook
himself (setting the Commonwealth behind, his private ends before) to
do as his own profit or ambition led him. Then was justice delayed,
and soon after denied; spite and favor determined all: hence faction,
thence treachery, both at home and in the field; everywhere wrong and
oppression; foul and horrid deeds committed daily, or maintained, in
secret or in open. Some who had been called from shops and warehouses,
without other merit, to sit in supreme councils and committees (as
their breeding was), fell to huckster the Commonwealth. Others did
thereafter as men could soothe and humor them best; so he who would
give most, or under covert of hypocritical zeal insinuate basest,
enjoyed unworthily the rewards of learning and fidelity, or escaped the
punishment of his crimes and misdeeds. Their votes and ordinances,
which men looked should have contained the repealing of bad laws, and
the immediate constitution of better, resounded with nothing else but
new impositions, taxes, excises,--yearly, monthly, weekly; not to
reckon the offices, gifts, and preferments bestowed and shared among
themselves."

His dislike of this system of committees, and of the generally dull and
unemphatic administration of the Commonwealth, attached him to the
Puritan army and to Cromwell; but in the continuation of the passage we
have referred to, he expresses--with something, let it be said, of a
schoolmaster's feeling--an unfavorable judgment on their career:--

"For _Britain_, to speak a truth not often spoken, as it is a land
fruitful enough of men stout and courageous in war, so it is naturally
not over-fertile of men able to govern justly and prudently in peace,
trusting only in their mother-wit; who consider not justly that
civility, prudence, love of the public good more than of money or vain
honor, are to this soil in a manner outlandish,--grow not here, but in
minds well implanted with solid and elaborate breeding; too impolitic
else and rude, if not headstrong and intractable to the industry and
virtue either of executing or understanding true civil government.
Valiant indeed, and prosperous to win a field; but to know the end and
reason of winning, unjudicious and unwise: in good or bad success,
alike unteachable. For the sun, which we want, ripens wits as well as
fruits; and as wine and oil are imported