hey called
him so or not.

Precisely here, however, lies the rub for Cromwell. His other
proceedings have all found advocates, and stand generally justified;
but this dismissal of the Rump Parliament and assumption of the
Protectorship, is what no one can pardon him. He had fairly grown to be
King in England; Chief Man of the victorious party in England: but it
seems he could not do without the King's Cloak, and sold himself to
perdition in order to get it. Let us see a little how this was.

England, Scotland, Ireland, all lying now subdued at the feet of the
Puritan Parliament, the practical question arose, What was to be done
with it? How will you govern these Nations, which Providence in a
wondrous way has given up to your disposal? Clearly those hundred
surviving members of the Long Parliament, who sit there as supreme
authority, cannot continue forever to sit. What _is_ to be done?--It
was a question which theoretical constitution-builders may find easy to
answer; but to Cromwell, looking there into the real practical facts of
it, there could be none more complicated. He asked of the Parliament,
What it was they would decide upon? It was for the Parliament to
say. Yet the Soldiers too, however contrary to Formula, they who had
purchased this victory with their blood, it seemed to them that they
also should have something to say in it! We will not "for all our
fighting have nothing but a little piece of paper." We understand that
the Law of God's Gospel, to which He through us has given the victory,
shall establish itself, or try to establish itself, in this land!

For three years, Cromwell says, this question had been sounded in the
ears of the Parliament. They could make no answer; nothing but talk,
talk. Perhaps it lies in the nature of parliamentary bodies; perhaps
no Parliament could in such case make any answer but even that of talk,
talk! Nevertheless the question must and shall be answered. You sixty
men there, becoming fast odious, even despicable, to the whole nation,
whom the nation already calls Rump Parliament, you cannot continue to
sit there: who or what then is to follow? "Free Parliament," right of
Election, Constitutional Formulas of one sort or the other,--the thing
is a hungry Fact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured by
it! And who are you that prate of Constitutional Formulas, rights of
Parliament? You have had to kill your King, to make Pride's Purges, to
expel and banish by