ists,
had also some minuter features of ugliness, which Englishmen have often
exulted have not marked an English revolution--sanguinary
proscriptions![328] We had thought that we had no revolutionary
tribunals! no Septembrisers! no noyades! no moveable guillotines
awaiting for carts loaded with human victims! no infuriated republican
urging, in a committee of public safety, the necessity of a salutary
massacre!

But if it be true that the same motives and the same principles were at
work in both nations, and that the like characters were performing in
England the parts which they did afterwards in France, by an argument _a
priori_ we might be sure that the same revolting crimes and chimerical
projects were alike suggested at London as at Paris. Human nature, even
in transactions which appear unparalleled, will be found to preserve a
regularity of resemblance not always suspected.

The first great tragic act was closely copied by the French: and if the
popular page of our history appears unstained by their revolutionary
axe, this depended only on a slight accident; for it became a question
of "yea" and "nay!" and was only carried in the negative by _two voices_
in the council! It was debated among "the bloody Rump," as it was
hideously designated, "whether to massacre and to put to the sword _all
the king's party_!"[329] Cromwell himself listened to the suggestion;
and it was only put down by the coolness of political calculation--the
dread that the massacre would be _too general_! Some of the Rump not
obtaining the blessedness of a massacre, still clung to the happiness of
an immolation; and many petitions were presented, that "_two or three
principal gentlemen_ of the royal party in EACH COUNTY might be
sacrificed to justice, whereby the land might be saved from
_blood-guiltiness_!" Sir Arthur Haslerigg, whose "passionate fondness of
liberty" has been commended,[330] was one of the committee of safety in
1647--I too would commend "a passionate lover of liberty," whenever I do
not discover that this lover is much more intent on the dower than on
the bride. Haslerigg, "an absurd, bold man," as Clarendon, at a single
stroke, reveals his character, was resolved not to be troubled with king
or bishop, or with any power in the state superior to "the Rump's." We
may safely suspect the patriot who can cool his vehemence in spoliation.
Haslerigg would have no bishops, but this was not from any want of
reverence for church lan