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HISTORY OF ENGLAND,

chap, baseness of that Convention which recalled the royal family

-without exacting new securities against maladministration.

Those who hold this language do not comprehend the realnature of the crisis which followed the deposition of RichardCromwell. England was in imminent danger of sinking underthe tyranny of a succession of small men raised up and pulleddown by military caprice. To deliver the country from thedomination of the soldiers was the first object of everyenlightened patriot: but it was an object which, while thesoldiers were united, the most sanguine could scarcely expectto attain. On a sudden a gleam of hope appeared. Generalwas opposed to general, army to army. On the use whichmight be made of one auspicious moment depended the futuredestiny of the nation. Our ancestors used that moment well.They forgot old injuries, waved petty scruples, adjournedto a more convenient season all dispute about the reformswhich our institutions needed, and stood together, Cavaliersand Roundheads, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, in firmunion, for the old laws of the land against military despotism.The exact partition of power among King, Lords, and Com-mons, might well be postponed till it had been decidedwhether England should be governed by King, Lords, andCommons, or by cuirassiers and pikemen. Had the statesmenof the Convention taken a different course, had they heldlong debates on the principles of government, had they drawnup a new constitution and sent it to Charles, had conferencesbeen opened, had couriers been passing and repassing duringsome weeks between Westminster and the Netherlands, withprojects and counterprojects, replies by Hyde and rejoindersbyPrynne, the coalition on which the public safety dependedwould have been dissolved: the Presbyterians and Royalistswould certainly have quarrelled: the military factions mightpossibly have been reconciled: and the misjudging friends ofliberty might long have regretted, under a rule worse than