f his party; for when he stood at
the door of the Commons, holding a paper with the names of the members,
he did not personally know one! And his "Purge" might have operated a
quite opposite effect, administered by his own unskilful hand, had not
Lord Grey of Groby, and the door-keeper,--worthy dispersers of the
British senate!--pointed out the obnoxious members, on whom our colonel
laid his hand, and sent off by his men to be detained, if a bold member,
or to be deterred from sitting in the house, if a frightened one. This
colonel had been a drayman; and the contemptible knot of the Commons,
reduced to fifty or sixty confederates, which assembled after his
"Purge," were called "Colonel Pride's Dray-Horses."

It was this Rump which voted the death of the sovereign, and abolished
the regal office, and the House of Peers--as "unnecessary, burdensome,
and dangerous!" Every office in parliament seemed "dangerous," but that
of the "Custodes libertatis Angliae," the keepers of the liberties of
England! or rather "the gaolers!" "The legislative half-quarter of the
House of Commons!" indignantly exclaims Clement Walker--the "Montagne"
of the French revolutionists!

The "Red-coats" as the military were nicknamed, soon taught their
masters, "the Rumpers," silence and obedience: the latter having raised
one colossal man for their own purpose, were annihilated by him at a
single blow. Cromwell, five years after, turned them out of their house,
and put the keys into his pocket. Their last public appearance was in
the fleeting days of Richard Cromwell, when the comi-tragedy of "the
Rump" concluded by a catastrophe as ludicrous as that of Tom Thumb's
tragedy!

How such a faction used their instruments to gather in the common spoil,
and how their instruments at length converted the hands which held them
into instruments themselves, appears in their history. When "the Long
Parliament" opposed the designs of Cromwell and Ireton, these chiefs
cried up "the liberty of the people," and denied "the authority of
parliament:" but when they had effectuated their famous "purge," and
formed a House of Commons of themselves, they abolished the House of
Lords, crying up the supreme authority of the House of Commons, and
crying down the liberty of the people. Such is the history of political
factions, as well as of statesmen! Charles the Fifth alternately made
use of the Pope's authority to subdue the rising spirit of the
Protestants of Germany,