posing his Cabinet had about as much weight with him as Cromwell's Council had with Cromwell. Those two great men were not infallible, and they may have erred in thinking that they could best govern a nation as they governed an army. Though Cromwell was a great soldier and Vane no soldier at all, I believe Cromwell found Vane's abilities as a statesman of the highest value in the deliberations of the Council of State. Indeed it is proved by Cromwell's own letters that in trying emergencies he was desirous to have the opinion of Vane to aid and guide his own conclusions. But when "lone Tyranny commanded" he could never more have the benefit of that aid and that guidance.

It will be seen by those who consider the subject with the attention it deserves and requires that the history of this Council of State furnishes a new and most important fact towards the formation of political science, if that science be considered as an experimental and therefore a progressive science. Lord Macaulay, though he thus considers the science of politics, has altogether omitted this important experiment supplied by the working of the Council of State, in his investigation of the question of executive administration in his essay on Sir William Temple. He says "the largest cabinets of modern times have not, we believe, consisted of more than fifteen members. Even this number has generally been thought too large. The Marquess Wellesley, whose judgment on executive administration is entitled to as much respect as that of any statesman that England ever produced, expressed, during the ministerial negociations of the year 1812, his conviction that even thirteen was an inconveniently large number. But in a cabinet of thirty members what chance could there be of finding unity, secrecy, expedition, any of the qualities which such a body ought to possess?"

1649.]

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE.

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Now whether or no this Council of State can be considered sufficiently analogous to a cabinet to make the same reasoning applicable to both, there can be no question that the Council of State of the Interregnum possessed in the highest degree ever possessed by any administrative council recorded in history, unity, secrecy, expedition, all the qualities required in a council formed for executive administration. And this Council consisted not of thirteen pronounced by the Marquess Wellesley an inconveniently large number, but of forty-one members. The difference between the ordinary case of a cabinet in modern times and the case of this Council of State was only this, that from the end of the 17th century the Crown retained the shadow of that authority of which the Tudors had before and the Parliament then held the substance; and that during the Interregnum the Parliament had both the shadow and the substance. Consequently the Council of State of the Interregnum held very much the same relation to the Sovereign, when the Parliament was both shadow and substance, as the Cabinet Council held afterwards when the Parliament was the substance, though the shadow was elsewhere. In both cases we have a Sovereign and a Council of executive administration to that Sovereign; and why, when the Council of forty-one members proved itself an executive Council of efficient action rarely if ever equalled in the world's history, the dictum of the Marquess Wellesley that even thirteen was an inconveniently large number for such a council, and the dictum of Lord Macaulay against there being any chance of finding in a cabinet of thirty members unity, secrecy, expedition, any of the qualities which such a body ought to possess, can be accepted as settling the question, it is not easy to see.

If the science of politics be, like all other sciences, except the purely mathematical, the rationale of accuratelyobserved facts, surely such a fact as this of the existence and successful action of this Council of State consisting of forty-one members cannot be left out of the problem of determining the number of members of which a council of executive administration may consist. Even if we apply to the question à-priori reasoning, why should the number thirteen be too large for unity, secrecy, and expedition, and the numbers ten, eleven, or nine not too large? Why indeed should not a council of three be an inconveniently large number if there be any truth in the old proverb that "two may keep counsel, when the third's away"? A proverb, the fallacy of which when applied to a council of executive administration consists in the assumption that the members of such council are not men of at least average faith and honour, but a pack of scoundrels tied together only by the common bond of crime. In truth this dogmatizing on the subject of the numbers of councils of executive administration is only an example of that mode of dealing with the science of politics, which considers it not as an experimental and therefore a progressive science but as a science founded and built-up on short synthetical arguments drawn from truths of the most vulgar notoriety, and which no writer has been more ready to condemn than Lord Macaulay.

I have said "accurately-observed facts," and therefore it will be proper to meet a question that may be fairly asked; did the whole number of forty-one members composing the Council of State attend the meetings of the Council? Now it appears from a minute of 14th May 1649 that down to that date some members had never

attended at all. The result at which I have arrived from a minute examination of the Order Book is that the number present varied very much, varied from thirty-four or thirty-five down to nine, which is the lowest number I have met with. This low scale, however, belongs to the

month of October when many of the members were probably out of town. The result abundantly proves that a

Council of executive administration actually and not merely nominally consisting of a number exceeding thirty members was found to possess unity, secrecy, expedition, in short all the qualities which such a body ought to possess; for never did any Government in any age or country evince greater ability for administration than this Council of State did at that time when contending single-handed against nearly all the world.

"That a letter of summons be sent unto such gentlemen appointed to be of this Council as never yet appeared here to come to the Council and attend the service of the Commonwealth."-Order Book of the Council of State, 14 May, 1649, à Meridie. MS. State Paper Office.

2 Order Book of the Council of State, 19 Feb. 1648. MS. State Paper Office.-Ibid., 3 Oct. 1649.-Ibid., 5

and 6 Oct. 1649.-Ibid., 11, 14, and 17 January 1652. On the 17th January 1652 the number present was 31. This was the time when the Dutch war engaged their attention, and when the pressure and importance of their business were such that the Council met on Sundays.-Ibid., Sunday 5 Dec. 1652; Sunday 23 May 1652; Sunday 30 May 1652.

CHAPTER III.

THE English Parliament had hitherto been obliged, by the pressure of business that absorbed all its resources, in a great measure to neglect Irish affairs, and to leave unpunished the abominable cruelties committed upon the defenceless English in Ireland in 1641, cruelties equalling in atrocity and far exceeding in the number of victims those perpetrated in 1857 by the sepoys in India. For eight years the perpetrators of the Irish massacre might be said. to have gone not only unpunished but triumphant; and it might seem that there was to be no reckoning upon. earth for that enormous crime. But the spirit of England, though it might seem to have slumbered, was not dead, and the time had come at last when she was to make Ireland feel both her power and her vengeance.

We have seen that throughout the whole of this spring and summer the Parliament and Council of State had been making great exertions to send reinforcements to their three commanders in Ireland Michael Jones, Sir Charles Coote, and Monk. All these were able men and for their services had received repeatedly the thanks of the Parlialiament and Council of State; and in August we find that Jones was promoted to the rank of Lieut.-General and Monk to that of Major-General. In the beginning of August Michael Jones had defeated the army of Ormond