Cromwell. But I am still of the opinion expressed in a former page that Ireton was sincere in his profession of political faith, and that though a fanatic in his way, "self in the highest," to use Lilburne's happy expression, was not his god as it was that of Cromwell. In regard to Cromwell "the grand juggler," and his "gang of creaturecolonels," there is, as I have said, an instructive significance in the passage I have quoted above. Cromwell's whole nature was so thoroughly imbued with craft, that when we consider that his unsleeping vigilance in the contrivance of snares was assisted by great natural sagacity and astuteness, by promptitude of decision and unbounded daring, we see that he gradually must have enveloped the men who sat and talked at Westminster in net within net, like so many flies in the wide-spread and powerful web of a huge and active spider. The fact is, that even with much less employment of spider machinery Cromwell might have accomplished his end. The victorious general of an army which has rendered itself all-powerful can always make himself supreme if he be so minded. Washington might have done so, if "self in the highest" had been his god. In 1782, Washington refused, "with great and sorrowful surprise" (these were his words) the supreme power and the crown, which certain discontented officers offered him. A far greater soldier than either Washington or Cromwell, Hannibal, might have had, according to the worshippers of successful crime, a more glorious end, if, after the battle of Cannæ, he had turned his victorious army to the destruction of his own country's constitution, such as it was. But Hannibal, though making no pretensions, like Cromwell, to saintship, was content to employ his unequalled strategic genius in overreaching and destroying enemies who were on their guard against him, not in overreaching and destroying

friends and colleagues who trusted him. And in strange contrast to the English Christian, the Carthaginian heathen, to borrow the eloquent words of Arnold, "from his childhood to his latest hour, in war and in peace, through glory and through obloquy, amid victories and amid disappointments, ever remembered to what purpose his father had devoted him, and withdrew no thought or desire or deed from their pledged service to his country."

"1

There is an English word, treachery, which means perfidy, that is, breach of faith, or breach of trust. There is another English word, treason, which means a breach of faith or of trust against the State, in other words treachery, not against a private individual, but against the public individual, or body of individuals, as representing all the individuals composing the State or nation. But there is a particular kind of this treachery, perfidy, or breach of trust against the State, for which the English language happily has no name, but which in the French language has received the name of coup d'état. The particular act which has received this fine name is an act of perfidy, treachery, or breach of trust against the State, performed by some individual placed in a position of special trust, and therefore of extraordinary power; which position often enables him to make his treachery or treason successful. Charles I. at

tempted some acts of this kind, but his brains were far from equal to the successful performance of them. Now, although to overreach and destroy friends who trust you and are off their guard is a far easier business, and requires far smaller abilities, than to overreach and destroy armed enemies, who are watching all your slightest movements, it still requires a certain portion of ability, chiefly of that kind which can simulate friendliness, frankness, and truthfulness towards 1 Arnold's History of Rome, vol. iii. p. 387.

M

men whom you intend to destroy. Of this faculty there are many degrees. The man, who possesses it in the highest degree, will not use any more falsehood than is absolutely necessary for the attainment of his ends. He will not, like Jonathan Wild in Fielding's story, put his hands into his friend's pockets, even when he knows there is nothing in them, or, like the Count, pack the cards, when he knows his adversary has no money. He will not be a habitual liar, quack, or renegade, whom no man of common-sense would trust. On the contrary, he will be a man with qualities that, besides making him loved by his wife and children, will make him liked, honoured, and trusted by many political and military comrades, with whom he will live for many years on terms of confidence and friendship, and then, when his time comes, will some day suddenly turn round upon them and, with the name of the God of Truth on his lips, ruin them and their cause. Such a man was Oliver Cromwell.

It will be more convenient to give the narrative of the trial of John Lilburne in a separate chapter. But in connection with that trial I will observe here that, although I have compared the Council of State in some points to the Star Chamber, I should be doing an act of gross injustice if I did not also carefully mark the essential points of difference. The Star Chamber took what may be called a mean as well as cruel revenge on those who opposed its tyranny. The Council of State was tyrannical too and vindictive against what appeared to it the audacity with which Lilburne disowned and defied its authority. But the members of the Council of State were honourably distinguished from all the other tyrants whom history has recorded. The Star Chamber scourged, mutilated, imprisoned in distant fortresses, and dared not submit their cause to a

jury of Englishmen. The tyrants of other countries and other times rid themselves of troublesome opponents by secret assassination, as well as judicial murder. The men of the Council of State of 1649 in England pursued their revenge in a different fashion. They had high, brave, English hearts; and what they did, whether for good or evil, they did like men, not like ignoble wild beasts or assassins. Even in England before their time, the captivity of a king or of a king's son was but a step distant from his assassination. But though with them too the king's captivity was the path to his grave, and though his trial was not an act of justice, his execution was the act of brave men, not of cowardly assassins, like the murders of Edward II., of Richard II., and of the sons of Edward IV. Those men erred, and in some points grievously; and grievously did some of them answer for their errors; nevertheless Englishmen will never forget that they raised England from what the Stuarts had made it, a name of scorn among the nations, to be a name to call up very different emotions, a name that, humanly speaking, connoted invincibility, a name "famous and terrible

world." 1

over the

Besides their exertions against open enemies, such as the Royalists in arms, and political adversaries, such as John Lilburne, the Council of State had abundance of other work on their hands. There are minutes from time to time about the "scavengery" of the streets, and "the nuisance -the common sewer." The streets being undrained as well as unpaved, the rain descending in small torrents from the waterspouts and mingling with the filth and offal from the houses, converted them into a quagmire. The projecting upper stories of the houses in the lanes, and in many

1 These are the words applied by Clarendon to the Parliamentary army.

parts even of the main streets, almost meeting overhead shut out both light and air. The consequences were stench, disease, and death, the plague being then never altogether out of London.

But the Council of State had other nuisances to contend with. Amid the fogs and darkness of the month of November, 1649, which succeeded Lilburne's trial, "robbers and thieves" appear to have given them much trouble. After nine o'clock even in ordinary times during the early part of the seventeenth century it was unsafe to walk the streets of London. Passengers were insulted, robbed, wounded, and sometimes killed. A sheriff's officer, in making a civil arrest, had often to be backed by a band of well-armed followers; and the night-watchmen and constables had an office proportionately dangerous. Such being the case in ordinary times, the evil was necessarily much increased by the long civil war, which had taken many persons from their usual occupations, and thrown them loose to swell the numbers of those who lived upon beggary or plunder. The disorders of times long past, handed down upon doubtful or imperfect evidence, and exaggerated or coloured by writers who, like certain rhetoricians, are content to draw upon their imaginations for their facts, are apt to be sometimes discredited altogether, or considered as belonging only to the romance of history. However, of the condition of London and the surrounding districts in this month of November, 1649,1 the minutes of the Order Book of the Council of State furnish a picture which, that I may not be tempted in the smallest

1 "That an order be drawn up against to-morrow in the afternoon for the prohibiting of the walking in the streets after [blank in orig.] of the night."-Order Book of the Council of

State, Die Jovis, 22 November, 1649. MS. State Paper Office. The hour after which the streets were unsafe specified in Somers' Tracts and other authorities was 9 o'clock.