That speech is the most exceptional, in some respects the most important, of all Cromwell's speeches. Spoken if not 'in haste,' certainly 'out of the fulness of the heart,' that is caused by anger, it is, though unusually brief, delightfully incautious. Being addressed to men who could not well be deceived, the speech must be true, at least so far as they are concerned, in every particular; it does not contain a single appeal to God; and of no other among Cromwell's speeches, are the original MS. notes in existence. This speech, of the utmost historic importance, is essentially unheroic in tone and circumstance,—the querulous complaint of a master against servants who have overmastered him,—an assertion of supremacy made by a man, who felt that he was not really supreme. But the singularity that attends the address to the recalcitrant officers is not yet exhausted. Surprise may well be felt that Carlyle, with this speech before him, ventured on the construction of his false image of Cromwell, the Hero. Judged even as an ordinary ruler, he must have been a very sorry Protector who, according to his own showing, was only a sham supreme magistrate,—the minister, the 'drudge,' of his servants but real masters—who had compelled him to call, and to dissolve Parliaments, and to impose on England those military despots.
Carlyle has endowed his ideal Protector 'with the virtue to create belief,' by the force of self-assertion, which still finds its imitators, by pouring out contempt on all who differ from him, and by implying that, as all other Cromwellian authorities are 'stupidities and falsities,' he alone was wise and true. This was but a risky basis on which to exhibit 'this Oliver' to the world, as the noblest Hero 'among the noblest of Human Heroisms, this English Puritanism of ours,' and as 'not a Man of falsehoods, but a Man of truths.' But reading over these words, and calling to mind the confidence with which Carlyle compels all to join with him in his Cromwell-worship, it is impossible to resist the conviction, that it was with good faith that he could see in Cromwell 'the glimpses,' even the revelation 'of the god-like,' and that he would not attend to aught that disclosed Cromwell 'not' as 'august and divine, but hypocritical, pitiable, detestable.' Even though he claimed a familiar acquaintance with the 'Thurloe Papers,' he must have been ignorant, it is impossible to think otherwise, of the black stories which Cromwell's 'expertest of secretaries' could publish against his master.
And passing from the worshipper to the Idol; surely it is but in accordance with common sense and common charity to hope that, as with Carlyle, so also with his Oliver, the real Cromwell was wholly shrouded from Cromwell's sight. That hope might, indeed, be forbidden by some. It might be argued that, although many a wrong-doing, such as bloodshed, oppression, or even treachery, has been committed by men in the sincere belief that they were doing God service, Cromwell cannot be placed among that group of self-deceivers: that he stands by himself, and on a lower level. It was to save himself, to propitiate a gang of mutinous servants, that Cromwell contrived and wrought out the deception of March, 1655, and obtained in the bloodshed that it produced, the essential result that he desired. And then, to give validity to his imposture, to grace it with the Divine sanction, he ascribed his course of acted and uttered lies, and the cruelty and misery they had engendered, to God himself.
Undoubtedly that statement is true. But yet on the other hand it may be pleaded, that nothing but an intense living conviction, that God was with him in all his ways, could have enabled Cromwell to make 'with comfort' his 'appeal to God, whether' the Insurrection of March 1655 'hath been the matter of Our Choice' or 'according to Our own inclinations?'
This is but a sorry plea to urge in Cromwell's behalf. The blackness and the fury of the storm, which roared across England during his dying hours, cannot have exceeded the blinding energy of that strong delusion, that ever drove him onward, through his cruel and crooked devices, fully persuaded that 'God was even such a one as' himself. Though all may agree in believing that it was not from the lips, but truly from the heart—not to cheat his hearers, but in a veritable ecstasy—that Cromwell claimed to stand before God, as one who 'had learned too much of God, to dally with him,' still it must be felt, that such an assertion, coming from such a Protector, reveals a mental condition that baffles the understanding. But as man, when he shrinks from passing judgment on another, ever takes the better part; and as even with the best amongst us, the relation of the soul to God is a question which, of all others, should not be intermeddled with, assuredly we must leave Cromwell, whose being is one of 'the deep things of God,' to His judgment.—'Hell and destruction are before the Lord: how much more then the hearts of the children of men?'
FOOTNOTES:
[30] 'Report of French Ambassador in Holland.' Thurloe, iii. 322.
[31] 'Clarendon' (Bodleian Papers), iii. II.
[32] 'Clarendon,' ed. 1839, 871. 'Clarendon' (Bodleian Papers), Cal. iii. 13 Egerton MSS., Brit. Mus. 2535. fo. 637.
[33] We thus found this conjecture: Cromwell held an intercepted letter from the King to Mr. Roles, addressed to him under his alias, Mr. Upton, expressed in terms of entire confidence (Thurl. iii. 75); but Roles was not arrested. And the suspicion inspired by the immunity which Cromwell granted to such a conspicuous Royalist, was confirmed by finding that Thurloe in a letter (dated 6th April, 1655) to Manning the spy, refers to 'Mr. Upton' as their common friend. (Egerton MSS., Brit. Mus. 2542. fo. 166.)