upon all our foreign enemies: do but (I say again) consider this, and you will confess, that his prodigious merits were a better title to imperial dignity, than the blood of an hundred royal progenitors; and will rather lament that he lived not to overcome more nations, than envy him the conquest and dominion of these."

tector.

"Whoever you are, said I (my indignation making me somewhat bolder), your discourse, methinks, becomes as little the person of a tutelar angel, as Cromwell's actions did that of a proIt is upon these principles that all the great crimes of the world have been committed, and most particularly those which I have had the misfortune to see in my own time, and in my own country. If these be to be allowed, we must break up human society, retire into the woods, and equally there stand upon our guards against our brethren mankind, and our rebels the wild beasts. For, if there can be no usurpation upon the rights of a whole nation, there can be none most certainly upon those of a private person; and, if the robbers of countries be God's vicegerents, there is no doubt but the thieves and banditos, and murderers, are his under officers. It is true which you say, that God is the source and fountain of all power; and it is no less true, that he is the creator of serpents, as well as of angels; nor does his goodness fail of its ends, even in the malice of his own creatures. What power he suffers the devil to exercise in this world, is too apparent by our daily experience; and by nothing more than the late monstrous iniquities which you dispute for, and patronize in

England: but would you infer from thence, that the power of the devil is a just and lawful one; and that all men ought, as well as most men do, obey him? God is the fountain of ail powers; but some flow from the right hand (as it were) of his goodness, and others from the left hand of his justice; and the world, like an island between these two rivers, is sometimes refreshed and nourished by the one, and sometimes overrun and ruined by the other; and (to continue a little farther the allegory) we are never overwhelmed with the latter, till, either by our malice or negligence, we have stopped and dammed up the

former.

“But to come a little closer to your argument, or rather the image of an argument, your similitude. If Cromwell had come to command in Ireland, in the place of the late Lord Strafford, I should have yielded obedience, not for the equipage, and the strength, and the guards which he brought with him, but for the commission which he should first have showed me from our common sovereign that sent him; and, if he could have done that from God Almighty, I would have obeyed him too in England: but that he was so far from being able to do, that, on the contrary, I read nothing but commands, and even public proclamations, from God Almighty, not to admit him.

"Your second argument is, that he had the same right for his authority, that is the foundation of all others, even the right of conquest. Are we then so unhappy as to be conquered by the person whom we hired at a daily rate, like a labourer, to conquer others for us? Did we furnish him

with arms, only to draw and try upon our enemies (as we, it seems, falsely thought them), and keep them for ever sheathed in the bowels of his friends? Did we fight for liberty against our prince, that we might become slaves to our servant? This is such an impudent pretence, as neither he nor any of his flatterers for him had ever the face to mention. Though it can hardly be spoken or thought of without passion, yet I shall, if you please, argue it more calmly than the case deserves.

“The right, certainly, of conquest can only be exercised upon those against whom the war is declared, and the victory obtained. So that no whole nation can be said to be conquered, but by foreign force. In all civil wars, men are so far from stating the quarrel against their country, that they do it only against a person, or party, which they really believe, or at least pretend, to be pernicious to it; neither can there be any just cause for the destruction of a part of the body, but when it is done for the preservation and safety of the whole. It is our country that raises men in the quarrel, our country that arms, our country that pays them, our country that authorizes the undertaking, and by that distinguishes it from rapine and murder; lastly, it is our country that directs and commands the army, and is indeed their general. So that to say, in civil wars, the prevailing party conquers their country, is to say, the country conquers itself. And, if the general only of that party be the conqueror, the army, by which he is made so, is no less conquered than the army which is beaten, and have as little reason

that

to triumph in that victory, by which they lose both their honour and liberty. So that, if Cromwell conquered any party, it was only that against which he was sent; and what that was, must appear by his commission. It was (says that) against a company of evil counsellors, and disaffected persons, who kept the king from a good intelligence and conjunction with his people. It was not then against the people. It is so far from being so, that even of that party which was beaten, the conquest did not belong to Cromwell, but to the parliament which employed him in their service, or rather indeed to the king and parliament, for whose service (if there had been any faith in men's vows and protestations) the wars were undertaken. Merciful God! did the right of this miserable conquest remain then in his majesty; and didst thou suffer him to be destroyed, with more barbarity than if he had been conquered even by savages and cannibals! Was it for king and parliament that we fought; and has it fared with them just as with the army which we fought against, the one part being slain, and the other fled? It appears therefore plainly, that Cromwell was not a conqueror, but a thief and robber of the rights of the king and parliament, and an usurper upon those of the people. I do not here deny conquest to be sometimes (though it be very rarely) a true title; but I deny this to be a true conquest. Sure I am, that the race of our princes came not in by such a one. One nation may conquer another sometimes justly; and if it be unjustly, yet still it is a true conquest, and they are to answer for the injustice only to

God Almighty (having nothing else in authority above them), and not as particular rebels to their country, which is, and ought always to be, their superior and their lord. If perhaps we find usurpation instead of conquest in the original titles of some royal families abroad (as no doubt there have been many usurpers before ours, though none in so impudent and execrable a manner), all I can say for them is, that their title was very weak, till, by length of time, and the death of all juster pretenders, it became to be the true, because it was the only one.

"Your third defence of his highness (as your highness pleases to call him) enters in most seasonably after his pretence of conquest; for then a man may say any thing. The government was broken; who broke it? It was dissolved; who dissolved it? It was extinguished; who was it, but Cromwell, who not only put out the light, but cast away even the very snuff of it? As if a man should murder a whole family, and then possess himself of the house, because it is better that he, than that only rats, should live there. Jesus God! (said I, and at that word I perceived my pretended angel to give a start and trembled, but I took no notice of it, and went on) this were a wicked pretension, even though the whole family were destroyed; but the heirs (blessed be God!) are yet surviving, and likely to outlive all heirs of their dispossessors, besides their infamy. Rode, caper, vitem, &c.' There will be yet wine enough left for the sacrifice of those wild beasts, that have made so much spoil in the vineyard. But did Cromwell think, like Nero, to