The second revolution was bloodless.  The Parliament which first arrayed itself against the government of Charles was no mean foe, even if it had not resorted to arms.  It held the purse-strings; it had the power to cripple the King, and to worry him into concessions.  But if the King was resolved to attack the Parliament itself, and coerce it by a standing army, and destroy all liberty in England, then the question assumed another shape; the war then became defensive, and was plainly justifiable, and Charles could but accept the issue, even his own execution, if it seemed necessary to his conquerors.  They took up arms in self-defence, and war, of course, brought to light the energies and talents of the greatest general, who as victor would have his reward.  Cromwell concluded to sweep away the old monarchy, and reign himself instead; and the execution of the King was one of his war measures.  It was the penalty Charles paid for making war on his subjects, instead of ruling them according to the laws.  His fate was hard and sad; we feel more compassion than indignation.  In our times he would have been permitted to run away; but those stern and angry old revolutionists demanded his blood.

For this cruel or necessary act Cromwell is responsible more than any man in England, since he could have prevented it if he pleased.  He ruled the army, which ruled the Parliament.  It was not the nation, or the representatives of the nation, who decreed the execution of Charles.  It was the army and the purged Parliament, composed chiefly of Independents, who wanted the subversion of the monarchy itself.  Technically, Charles was tried by the Parliament, or the judges appointed by them; really, Cromwell was at the bottom of the affair, as much as John Calvin was responsible for the burning of Servetus, let partisans say what they please.  There never has a great crime or blunder been committed on this earth which bigoted, or narrow, or zealous partisans have not attempted to justify.  Bigoted Catholics have justified even the slaughter of St. Bartholomew.  Partisans have no law but expediency.  All Jesuits, political, religious, and social, in the Catholic and Protestant churches alike, seem to think that the end justifies the means, even in the most beneficent reforms; and when pushed to the wall by the logic of opponents, will fall back on the examples of the Old Testament.  In defence of lying and cheating they will quote Abraham at the court of Pharaoh.  There is no insult to the human understanding more flagrant, than the doctrine that we may do evil that good may come.  And yet the politics and reforms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have been based on that miserable form of jesuitism.  Here Machiavelli is as vulnerable as Escobar, and Burleigh as well as Oliver Cromwell, who was not more profound in dissimulation than Queen Elizabeth herself.  The best excuse we can render for the political and religious crimes of that age is, that they were in accordance with its ideas.  And who is superior to the ideas of his age?