The religious party of the Presbyterians was closely united with the party of political revolution. The Presbyterians wished to effect a revolution in the church analogous to that which their allies meditated in the state. They wished to have the church governed by assemblies (presbyteries), and to lodge religious power in a hierarchy of assemblies working into each other, as their allies wished to lodge political power in the House of Commons. But the Presbyterian revolution was more bold and complete, for it aimed at changing the form, as well as the groundwork, of church government, whilst the political party aspired only to displace influences and preponderance, and did not contemplate any overthrow in the form of the institutions.
Thus the chiefs of the political party were not all favourable to the Presbyterian organisation of the church. Several of them— Hampden and Holles, for example—would have preferred a moderate episcopacy, restricted to functions purely ecclesiastical, and permitting increased liberty of conscience. However, they gave in to it, for they could not spare their fanatical allies.
A third party demanded still more. This alleged that it was necessary to change at once the groundwork and the form of the government, that the whole political constitution was vicious and disastrous. This party threw aside the past history of England, and rejected all national institutions and traditions, in order to found a new government upon pure theory, in as far at least as it conceived a theory. It was not only a revolution in the government that it designed to accomplish, but also a social revolution. The party of which I have just spoken, the party of political revolution, was anxious to introduce great changes into the relations of the parliament with the crown, and wished to extend the power of the houses, especially of the Commons, to invest them with the right of nomination to great public offices, and with the supreme direction of general affairs; but its schemes of reform went not beyond these points. It had no idea of changing, for instance, the electoral, the judicial, the administrative, or the municipal system of the country. The republican party meditated all these changes, publicly asserted their necessity, and designed, in a word, to remodel not only the public powers, but the social relations, and the distribution of private rights.
Like the preceding, this party also was composed of a religious and of a political portion. In the latter class were the real theoretical republicans, Ludlow, Harrington, Milton, &c. By their side were ranged the republicans from circumstances and interest, the principal chiefs of the army—Ireton, Cromwell, and Lambert— all more or less sincere in their first impulse, but soon controlled and led by personal views and the necessities of their situation. Around them was rallied the religious republican party, composed of all the enthusiastic sects which recognised no power as legitimate but that of Jesus Christ, and, whilst waiting for His coming, desired the government of His elect. At the tail of the party was a rather considerable number of libertines and fantastical dreamers, the former promising themselves a career of licentiousness, the latter equality of goods and universal suffrage.
In 1653, after twelve years of contest, all these parties had successively appeared and failed in their designs. They ought at least to have been convinced of this result, and it is certain that the public was so. The legal party, quickly thrust aside, had seen the ancient constitution and laws spurned and trampled under foot, and innovations penetrating on all sides. The party of political revolution witnessed parliamentary forms perish in the novel use to which it was wished to apply them; after twelve years of domination, it saw the House of Commons reduced, by the successive expulsion of the Royalists and the Presbyterians, to a very small number of members, despised and detested by the public, and utterly incapable of governing. The republican party seemed to have succeeded best; it had, in appearance, remained master of the field of battle; the House of Commons counted scarcely more than fifty or sixty members, all republicans. They might believe and call themselves masters of the country; but the country resolutely refused to allow itself to be governed by them, and they were incapable of giving effect to their will in any quarter; they had no means of action either on the army or the people. No social bond or safety any longer subsisted; justice was not rendered, or, if it were, it was not justice; its administration was directed by party-spirit, chance, or malice. And not only was there an absence of all safety in the relations of society, but there was none even on the high roads; they were covered with robbers and brigands. Thus physical as well as moral anarchy prevailed, and the House of Commons and the republican council of state were utterly inefficient to preserve order.
The three great parties of the Revolution, then, had been successively called upon to conduct it, to govern the country according to their ability and theories; and they had been found incapable of doing so; they had all three completely failed, and were writhing powerless. 'It was then,' says Bossuet, 'that a man was found who left nothing to fortune that he could place beyond its reach by counsel and foresight;' an expression quite erroneous, and which all history belies. No man ever left more to fortune than Cromwell; none ever exposed more to hazard, or proceeded with more temerity, without design or object, but the determination to go as far as fate would permit him. Cromwell is characterised by a boundless ambition and an admirable skill in converting each day and each circumstance into a means of progression, the art of turning fortune to account, without presuming to direct it. He displayed qualities such as perhaps no man who has pursued a career at all analogous ever evinced; he was suited for all the phases, the most distinct and varied, of the revolution. He was equally a man for the first as for the last of its periods: in the beginning, the instigator of insurrection, the promoter of anarchy, and the most fierce revolutionist in England; subsequently, the man of reaction, the re-establisher of order and of social organisation; thus playing by himself alone all the parts which, in the usual course of revolutions, are divided amongst the greatest actors. We cannot say that Cromwell was a Mirabeau; he wanted eloquence, and in the first years of the Long Parliament, although highly active, he made no figure. But he was successively Danton and Bonaparte. He had more than any other contributed to prostrate power, and he raised it up because none other could assume and wield it. Some government was requisite, and all aspirants to the conduct of one miserably failed; but he succeeded. Once master of the government, this man, whose ambition had shown itself so daring and insatiable, who had always advanced, pushing fortune before him, and stayed by no barrier, exhibited a good sense, prudence, and perception of the practicable, sufficient to control his most violent desires. There is no doubt he had a keen relish for absolute power, and felt a strong inclination to place the crown upon his head, and bequeath it to his family. This latter purpose he abandoned, when he became timeously aware of the peril it would expose him to; and with regard to absolute power, although he practically exercised it, he was of too sound an intellect not to comprehend that the feeling of his age was utterly repugnant to it, that the revolution in which he had co-operated, and which he had followed in all its phases, had been directed against despotism, and that the irrepressible desire of England was to be governed by a parliament, and according to parliamentary forms. Therefore he, the despot, by taste and in fact, endeavoured to have a parliament, and to govern after a parliamentary fashion. He addressed himself successively to all parties; he attempted to form a parliament with the religious enthusiasts, with the republicans, with the Presbyterians, and with the officers of the army. He tried all possible means to constitute a parliament which could and would act with him. He sought in vain: all parties, when once seated in Westminster, wished to wrest from him the power he exercised, and to govern in their turn. I will not affirm that Cromwell's principal motive was not his personal interest and gratification, but there is not the least doubt that if he had thrown up his power, he must necessarily have resumed it the next day; for Puritans or royalists, republicans or officers, none others than Cromwell himself were conditioned to govern with any order or justice. The experiment, in fact, had been made. It was impossible to permit the parliament—that is, the parties sitting in parliament—to assume an empire which they could not preserve. Such, then, was the situation of Cromwell; he governed by a system which he knew perfectly well was hateful to the country, and he exercised a power acknowledged to be necessary, but which was acceptable to no one. His sway was not considered by any party as a definitive, established government. The royalists, the Presbyterians, and the republicans, the army itself, the party which was the most devoted to him, were all convinced that he was only a transitory master. At bottom, he never reigned over the minds of men; he was never anything in their eyes but a make-shift, a necessity of the moment. The Protector, absolute master of England, was obliged all his life to make use of force to retain power. No party could govern as he was able to do, yet none looked upon him with a kindly or favourable eye; on the contrary, he was constantly attacked by all.
At his death, the republicans alone were in so compact an order as to lay hands on power. They did so, and succeeded no better than they had formerly done. It was not from any want of confidence in themselves, at least so far as the fanatics of the party were concerned. A pamphlet of Milton, published at that epoch, remarkable for talent and enthusiasm, is entitled, 'An Easy and Prompt Method for Establishing the Republic' The self-conceit of these men was as great as ever. They shortly relapsed into that impossibility of governing which they had previously evinced. Monk assumed the conduct of the event which all England was breathlessly expecting. The Restoration was effected.
The restoration of the Stuarts was a truly national occurrence. It presented itself with the advantages of an ancient government, reposing on the traditions and cherished remembrances of the country, and at the same time with the favourable auspices of a new government, exposed to no recent trial, and the faults and weight of which had not been lately experienced. The ancient monarchy was the only system of government, which for twenty years had not been condemned for its incapacity and its bad success in the administration of the country. These two causes rendered the Restoration popular: it was opposed only by the dregs of the violent parties; the public rallied around it with great good-will. In the opinion of the country at large, it was the only chance and means of forming a legal government, the fact which was most ardently desired by the community. This was also what the Restoration undertook to effect, the promise of a legal government was precisely what it held out.