Lectures and Essays

by Goldwin Smith

Flinging epithets at Cromwell is a very harmless indulgence of sentiment. His memory has passed unscathed even through the burning eloquence which, from the pulpit of the Restoration, denounced him as "wearing a bad hat, and that not paid for." Since research has placed him before us as he really was, the opinion has been gaining ground that he was about the greatest human force ever directed to a moral purpose; and in that sense, about the greatest man, take him all in all, that ever trod the scene of history. If his entire devotion to his cause, his valour, his magnanimity, his clemency, his fidelity to the public service, his domestic excellence and tenderness are not "conduct," all we can say is, so much the worse for "conduct." The type to which his character belonged, in common with the whole series of historic types, had in it something that was special and transitory, combined with much that, so far as we see, was universal and will endure for ever. It is in failing to note the special and transitory element, and the limitations which it imposed on the hero's greatness, that Carlyle's noble biography runs into poetry, and departs from historic truth. To supply this defect is the proper work of rational criticism; but the criticism which begins with "Philistine" is not likely to be very rational.

The objection urged by Bolingbroke against Cromwell's foreign policy, on the ground that to unite with France, which was gaining strength, against Spain, which was beginning to decline, was not the way to maintain the balance of power in Europe, is once more reproduced as though it had not been often brought forward and answered. Cromwell was not bound to trouble his head about such a figment of a special diplomacy as the balance of power any more than Shakespeare was bound to trouble his head about Voltaire's rules for the drama. He was the chief and the defender of Protestantism, and as such he was naturally led to ally himself with France, which was comparatively liberal, against Spain, which was the great organ of the Catholic reaction. An alliance with Spain was a thing impossible for a Puritan. Looking to the narrower interest of England, much more was to be gained by a war with Spain than by a war with France, because by a war with Spain an entrance was forced for English enterprise through the barriers which Spanish monopoly had raised against commercial enterprise in America. The security of England appears, in Cromwell's judgment, to have depended on her intrinsic strength, which no one can doubt that, under extraordinary disadvantages, he immensely increased, rather than on the maintenance of a European equilibrium which, as the number of the powers increased, became palpably impracticable. It may be added, that the incipient decline of the double-headed House of Austria, if it is visible to our eyes as we trace back the course of events, can hardly have been visible to any eye at that time, and, what is still more to the purpose, that the dangerous ascendency of Louis XIV. resulted in great measure from the betrayal of England by Charles II., and would have been impossible had, we will not say a second Cromwell, but a Protestant or patriotic monarch, sat on the Protector's throne.

Bolingbroke suggests, and Mr. Arnold embraces the suggestion, that Charles I., by making war on France, showed himself more sagacious with regard to foreign policy than Cromwell. But Mr. Arnold, in recommending Bolingbroke's philosophy to a generation which he thinks has too much neglected it, has discreetly warned us to let his history alone. Charles I., or rather Buckingham, in whose hands Charles was a puppet, made war on Spain, though in the most incapable manner, and with a most ignominious result: he at one time lent the French Government English ships to be used against the Protestants of Rochelle, whose resistance, apart from the religious question, was the one great obstacle to the concentration of the French power; and though he subsequently quarrelled with France, few will believe—assuredly Clarendon did not believe—that among the motives for the change, policy of any kind predominated over the passions and the vanity of the favourite. That Cromwell would have lent a steady and effective support to the Protestants, and thus have prevented the concentration of the French power, is as certain as any unfulfilled contingency can be.

Mr. Arnold is evidently anxious to bring Bolingbroke into fashion. "Hear Bolingbroke upon the success of Puritanism." Hear Lovelace on Dr. Johnson; one critic would be about as edifying as the other. Bolingbroke, a sceptical writer and a scoffer at Anglican doctrine, to say nothing about his morals, allied himself for party purposes with the fanatical clergy of the Anglican Establishment, well represented by Sacheverel, and, to gratify his allies, passed as Minister persecuting laws, about the last of the series, against Nonconformists. This, perhaps, is a proof in a certain way, of philosophic largeness of view. But if Bolingbroke is to be commended to ingenuous youth as a guide superior to party narrowness or bias, it may be well to remember the passage of his letter to Sir William Wyndham, in which he very frankly describes his own aims, and those of his confederates on their accession to office, admitting that "the principal spring of their actions was to have the government of the State in their hands, and that their principal views were the conservation of this power, great employments to themselves, and great opportunities of rewarding those who had helped to raise them, and of hurting those who stood in opposition to them;" though he has the grace to add that with these considerations of party and private interest were intermingled some which had for their object the public good. In another place he avows that he and his party designed "to fill the employments of the kingdom down to the meanest with Tories," by which they would have anticipated, and, indeed, by anticipation outdone, the vilest and most noxious proceeding of the coarsest demagogue who ever climbed to power on the shoulders of faction in the United States. It may be instructive to compare with this the principles upon which public employments were distributed by Cromwell.

It would be out of place to discuss the whole question of the Protector's administration by way of reply to a passing thrust of antipathy. But when judgment is pronounced on his external policy, his critics ought not to leave out of consideration the Union of Scotland and Ireland with England, successfully accomplished by him, repealed by the Restoration, and, like not a few of his other measures, revived and ratified by posterity, after a delay fraught with calamitous consequences in both cases, and which, in the case of Ireland, may perhaps even yet prove fatal.

We cannot help remarking, however, that the ecclesiastical policy of the Protectorate was one which it would be most inconsistent on the part of Mr. Arnold and those who hold the same view with him to decry. It was a national church (to prevent the hasty abolition of which, seems to have been Cromwell's main reason for dissolving the Barebones Parliament) with the largest possible measure of comprehension. To us the weak points of such a policy appear manifest enough, but by Mr. Arnold and those of his way of thinking it ought, if we mistake not, to be respected as an anticipation of their own deal.

Of one great and irretrievable error Cromwell was guilty—he died before his hour. That his government was taking root is clear from the bearing of Mazarin and Don Lewis De Haro, sufficiently cool judges, towards the Stuart Pretender. The Restoration was a reaction not against the Protectorate but against the military anarchy which ensued. Had Cromwell lived ten years longer, or had his marshals been true to his successor, to his cause, and to their own fortunes, there would have been an end of the struggle against Stuart prerogative, the spirit of Laud would have been laid for ever; the temporal power of ecclesiastics would have troubled no more; the Union with Scotland and Ireland would have remained unbroken; and the genuine representation of the people embodied in the Instrument of Government would have continued to exist, in the place of rotten boroughs, the sources of oligarchy and corruption, of class government and class wars. Let us philosophize about general causes as much as we will, untoward accidents occur: the loss of Pym and Hampden in the early part of the Revolution, and that of Cromwell at its close, may be fairly reckoned as accidents, and they were untoward in the highest degree.

No doubt, while Falkland fits perfectly into the line of English progress and takes his place with obvious propriety among the Saints of Constitutionalism in the vestibule of the House of Commons, while even Hampden finds admission as the opponent of ship-money, the kind veil of oblivion being drawn over the part he played as a leader in the Revolution, Cromwell, though his hold over the hearts of the English people is growing all the time, remains in an uncovenanted condition. The problem of his statue is still, and, so far as England is concerned, seems likely long to be, unsolved. Put him high or low, in the line of kings or out of it, he is hopelessly incongruous, incommensurable, and out of place. He is in fact the man of the New World; his institutions in the main embody the organic principles of New World society: at Washington, not at Westminster should be his statue.

What Puritanism did for England, and what credit is due to it as an element of English character, are questions which cannot be settled by mere assertion, on our side at least. In its highest development, and at the period of its greatest men, it was militant, and everything militant is sure to bear evil traces of the battle. For that reason Christianity has always been in favour of peace and goodwill; let the Regius Professor of Theology at Oxford, in his Christian philosophy of war, be as ingenious and as admirable as he may. But sometimes it is necessary to accept the arbitrament of the sword. It was necessary at Marathon, on the plain of Tours, on the waters which bore the Armada, at Lutzen, at Marston, at Leipsic, at Gettysburg. Darius, the Moors, Philip II., Wallenstein, Prince Rupert, Bonaparte, the Slave-owners, did not offer you the opportunity which you would so gladly have embraced, of a tranquil and amicable discussion among lime-trees and violets. On each occasion the cause of human progress drew along with it plenty of mud and slime, nevertheless it was the cause of human progress. On each occasion the wrong side no doubt had its Falklands, nevertheless it was the wrong side.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century the Reformation was brought to the verge of destruction. When Wallenstein sat down before Stralsund everything was gone but England, Holland, Sweden, and some cantons of Switzerland. In England the stream of reaction was running strong; Holland could not have stood by herself; Sweden was nothing as a power, though it turned out that she had a man. Fortunately the Lambeth Popedom and the Royal Supremacy prevented the English division of the army of Reaction from getting into line with the other divisions and compelled it to accept decisive battle on a separate field against the most formidable soldiers of the Reformation. These soldiers saved Protestantism, which was their first object, and they saved English liberty into the bargain. We who have come after can stand by the battlefield, pouncet-box in hand, and sniff and sneer as much as we will.