Again,
Oliver had made his choice. He had kept the hearts of his soldiers, but he had broken with every other class of his fellow citizens.—i. 129.
That is, he had broken through all the promises, pledges, and specious pretences by which he had deceived and enslaved the nation, which Mr. Macaulay calls with such opportune naïveté, his fellow citizens! Then follows, not a censure of this faithless usurpation, but many laboured apologies, and even defences of it, and a long series of laudatory epithets, some of which are worth collecting as a rare contrast to Mr. Macaulay's usual style, and particularly to the abuse of Charles, which we have just exhibited.
His genius and resolution made him more absolute master of his
country than any of her legitimate Kings had been.—i. 129.
He having cut off the legitimate King's head on a pretence that Charles had wished to make himself absolutely master of the country.
Everything yielded to the vigour and ability of Cromwell.—i. 130.
The Government, though in the form of a Republic, was in truth a despotism, moderated only by the wisdom, the sober-mindedness, and the magnanimity of the despot.—i. 137.
With a vast deal more of the same tone.
But Mr. Macaulay particularly expatiates on the influence that Cromwell exercised over foreign states: and there is hardly any topic to which he recurs with more pleasure, or, as we think, with less sagacity, than the terror with which Cromwell and the contempt with which the Stuarts inspired the nations of Europe. He somewhat exaggerates the extent of this feeling, and greatly misstates or mistakes the cause; and as this subject is in the present state of the world of more importance than any others in the work, we hope we may be excused for some observations tending to a sounder opinion on that subject.
It was not, as Mr. Macaulay everywhere insists, the personal abilities and genius of Cromwell that exclusively, or even in the first degree, carried his foreign influence higher than that of the Stuarts. The internal struggles that distracted and consumed the strength of these islands throughout their reigns necessarily rendered us little formidable to our neighbours; and it is with no good grace that a Whig historian stigmatises that result as shameful; for, without discussing whether it was justifiable or not, the fact is certain, that it was opposition of the Whigs—often in rebellion and always in faction against the Government—which disturbed all progress at home and paralysed every effort abroad. We are not, we say, now discussing whether that opposition was not justifiable and may not have been ultimately advantageous in several constitutional points; we think it decidedly was: but at present all we mean to do is to show that it had a great share in producing on our foreign influence the lowering effects of which Mr. Macaulay complains.