by imbecility.[1] On each occasion he found himself invested with absolute power over the military, and, through the military, over the three nations.  But on each occasion he was anxious to part with that power; and if, at last, he had acquiesced in the instrument of government, it was because it made the parliament a check on the protector, and the protector a check on the parliament.  That he did not bring himself into his present situation, he had God for a witness above, his conscience for a witness within, and a cloud of witnesses without; he had the persons who attended when he took the oath of fidelity to “the instrument;” the officers of the army in the three nations, who testified their approbation by their signatures; the city of London, which feasted him, the counties, cities, and boroughs, that had sent him addresses; the judges, magistrates, and sheriffs, who acted by his commission; and the very men who now stood before him, for they came there in obedience to his writ, and under the express condition that “the persons so chosen should not

[Footnote 1:  It is remarkable that, in noticing the despotism of the long parliament, he makes mention of the very same thing, which his enemy Lilburne urged against it:  “by taking the judgment, both in capital and criminal things, to themselves, who in former times were not known to exercise such a judicature.”  He boldly maintains that they meant to perpetuate themselves by filling up vacancies as they occurred, and had made several applications to him to obtain his consent.  He adds, “Poor men, under this arbitrary power, were driven like flocks of sheep by forty in a morning, to the confiscation of goods and estates, without any man being able to give a reason that two of them had deserved to forfeit a shilling.  I tell you the truth; and my soul, and many persons whose faces I see in this place, were exceedingly grieved at these things, and knew not which way to help it, but by their mournings, and giving their negatives when the occasion served.”  I notice this passage, because since the discovery of the sequestrators’ papers it has been thought, from the regularity with which their books were kept, and the seeming equity of their proceedings, as they are entered, that little injustice was done.]

have power to change the government as settled in one single person and the parliament.”  He would, therefore, have them to know, that four things were fundamental:  1.  That the supreme power should be vested in a single person and parliament; 2. that the parliament should be successive, and not perpetual; 3. that neither protector nor parliament alone should possess the uncontrolled command of the military force; and 4. that liberty of conscience should be fenced round with such barriers as might exclude both profaneness and persecution.  The other articles of the instrument were less essential; they might be altered with circumstances; and he should always be ready to agree to what was reasonable.