It was a stormy night, August 30, 1658, when the wild winds were roaring and all nature was overclouded with darkness and gloom, that the last intelligible words of the dying hero were heard by his attendants:  “O Lord! though I am a miserable sinner, I am still in covenant with Thee.  Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, an instrument to do Thy people good; and go on, O Lord, to deliver them and make Thy name glorious throughout the world!” These dying words are the key alike to his character and his mission.  He believed himself to be an instrument of the Almighty Sovereign in whom he believed, and whom, with all his faults and errors, he sought to serve, and in whom he trusted.

And it is in this light, chiefly, that the career of this remarkable man is to be viewed.  An instrument of God he plainly was, to avenge the wrongs of an insulted, an indignant, and an honest nation, and to impress upon the world the necessity of wise and benignant rulers.  He arose to vindicate the majesty of public virtue, to rebuke the egotism of selfish kings, to punish the traitors of important trusts.  He arose to point out the true sources of national prosperity, to head off the troops of a renovated Romanism, to promote liberty of conscience in all matters of religious belief.  He was raised up as a champion of Protestantism when kings were returning to Rome, and as an awful chastiser of those bigoted and quarrelsome Irish who have ever been hostile to law and order, and uncontrollable by any influence but that of fear.  But, above all, he was raised up to try the experiment of liberty in the seventeenth century.

That experiment unfortunately failed.  All sects and parties sought ascendency rather than the public good; angry and inexperienced, they refused to compromise.  Sectarianism was the true hydra that baffled the energy of the courageous combatant.  Parliaments were factious, meddlesome, and inexperienced, and sought to block the wheels of government rather than promote wholesome legislation.  The people hankered for their old pleasures, and were impatient of restraint; their leaders were demagogues or fanatics; they could not be coerced by mild measures or appeals to enlightened reason.  Hence coercive measures were imperative; and these could be carried only by a large standing army,—­ever the terror and menace of liberty; the greatest blot on constitutional governments,—­a necessity, but an evil, since the military power should be subordinate to the civil, not the civil to the military.  The iron hand by which Cromwell was obliged to rule, if he ruled at all, at last became odious to all classes, since they had many rights which were ignored.  When they clamored for the blood of an anointed tyrant, they did not bargain for a renewed despotism more irksome and burdensome than the one they had suppressed.  The public rejoicings, the universal enthusiasm, the brilliant spectacles and fetes, the flattering receptions and speeches which hailed the restoration of Charles II.,