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.

And there is still another consideration which escapes Mr. Macaulay in his estimate of such usurpers as Cromwell and Buonaparte.  A usurper is always more terrible both at home and abroad than a legitimate sovereign:  first, the usurper is likely to be (and in these two cases was) a man of superior genius and military glory, wielding the irresistible power of the sword; but there is still stronger contrast—­ legitimate Governments are bound—­at home by laws—­abroad by treaties, family ties, and international interests; they acknowledge the law of nations, and are limited, even in hostilities, by many restraints and bounds.  The despotic usurpers had no fetters of either sort—­they had no opposition at home, and no scruples abroad.  Law, treaties, rights, and the like, had been already broken through like cobwebs, and kings naturally humbled themselves before a vigour that had dethroned and murdered kings, and foreign nations trembled at a power that had subdued in their own fields and cities the pride of England and the gallantry of France!  To contrast Cromwell and Charles II, Napoleon and Louis XVIII, is sheer nonsense and mere verbiage—­it is as if one should compare the house-dog and the wolf, and argue that the terror inspired by the latter was very much to his honour.  All this is such a mystery to Mr. Macaulay that he wanders into two theories so whimsical, that we hesitate between passing them by as absurdities, or producing them for amusement; we adopt the latter.  One is that Cromwell could have no interest and therefore no personal share in the death of Charles.  “Whatever Cromwell was,” says Mr. Macaulay, “he was no fool; and he must have known that Charles I was obviously a less difficulty in his way than Charles II.”  Cromwell, we retain the phrase, “was no fool,” and he thought and found that Charles II, was, as far as he was concerned, no difficulty at all.  The real truth was, that the revolutionary party in