e
Commonwealth, which even the Parliament should be bound not to touch?
Must not the perpetuity of Republican Government itself, or
non-return to Kingship or single Chief Magistracy of any kind, be one
of these fundamentals, and Liberty of Conscience another? Nay, should
a Church Establishment and Tithes be left open questions, or should
there be some absolute pre-determination on that great subject?
Finally, when the Sub-Committee and the Committee of Safety, and the
Army officers round about, should have agreed upon all these
questions, so far as to be able to draw out a Constitution or Form of
Government sufficiently satisfactory to themselves, ought not that
Constitution to be submitted to some wider representative authority
for revision and ratification before being imposed on the People? If
so, what should that intervening and ratifying authority be?[1]

[Footnote 1: This is not a paragraph of suppositions, but the result
of a study of the actual chaos of opinion at the moment, by the help
of hints from Whitlocke, Ludlow, the letters of M. de Bordeaux, and
information in contemporary Thomason pamphlets. Strangely enough,
some of the most luminous hints come from the letters of M. de
Bordeaux. He was observing all coolly and clearly with foreign eyes,
and reporting twice a week to Mazarin.]

One can see that there were two parties among the debaters. Vane, in
his strange position at last after his many vicissitudes, had come
trailing clouds of his peculiar notions with him, and was regarded as
the advocate of wild and impracticable novelties. Not merely absolute
Liberty of Conscience and abolition of Tithes, in which Ludlow and
others went with him, but certain Millenarian or Fifth Monarchy
speculations, pointing to a glorious future over the trampled ruins
of the Church-Establishment and of much besides, were ideas which he
wanted to ingraft in some shape into the new Constitution. Here he
represented a number of enthusiasts among the subalterns of the Army
and among ex-Army men; and, indeed, it had been with some difficulty
that Major-General Harrison, the head of the Millenarians, had been
kept out of the Committee of Safety at its first formation, and so
prevented from resuming public functions after his five years of
disablement. Not having Harrison by his side, Vane could do little
more than ventilate his Millenarianism, Communism, or whatever it
was, though, as Whitlocke says, he "was hard to be satisfied