een limited by Nature to peddle and
purloin; puny mechanics, who had suddenly dropped their needles, their
hammers, and their lasts, and slunk out from behind their shop-counters;
those who had never aspired beyond the constable of the parish, were now
seated in the council of state; where, as Milton describes them, "they
fell to huckster the commonwealth:" there they met a more rabid race of
obscure lawyers, and discontented men of family, of blasted reputations;
adventurers, who were to command the militia and navy of
England,--governors of the three kingdoms! whose votes and ordinances
resounded with nothing else but new impositions, new taxes, excises,
yearly, monthly, weekly sequestrations, compositions, and universal
robbery!

Baxter vents one deep groan of indignation, and presciently announces
one future consequence of _Reform_! "In all this appeared the severity
of God, the mutability of worldly things, and the fruits of error,
pride, and selfishness, _to be charged hereafter upon reformation and
religion_." As a statesman, the sagacity of this honest prophet was
narrowed by the horizon of his religious views; for he ascribes the
whole as "prepared by Satan to the injury of the Protestant cause, and
the advantage of the Papists!" But dropping his particular application
to the devil and the Papists, honest Richard Baxter is perfectly right
in his general principle concerning "Rumpers,"--"Sans-culottes," and
"Radicals."

FOOTNOTES:

[325] History of Independency, Part II. p. 32.

[326] First collected and published in 1661, and afterwards reprinted
in two small vols. 1731.

[327] The first collection ever formed of these political satires
was printed in 1660, with the quaint title of "Ratts rhimed to
Death; or, the Rump-parliament hang'd up in the Shambles."

[328] In one of the popular political songs of the day, "The Rump"
is aptly compared to

"The foxes of Samson, that carried a brand
In their tails, to destroy and to burn up the land."

[329] Clement Walker's History of Independency, part II. p. 130.
Confirmed by Barwick in his Life, p. 163.

[330] The Rev. Mark Noble's Memoirs of the Protectoral House of
Cromwell, i. 405.

[331] Clement Walker's History of Independency, Part II. 173.

[332] Ib., Part I. 160.

[333] Mercurius Rusticus, xii. 115. Barwick's Life, p. 42.

[334] This actor was a comedian named Robinson, of the Blackfriars