At this point the Protector interposed.  On the afternoon of the same day on which Hasilrig had taken his seat (Jan. 25) the Commons were summoned to the Banqueting House in Whitehall, to listen to another speech from his Highness (Speech XVII.), addressed to them and the Other House together.  It opened with the phrase “My Lords and Gentlemen of thee Two Houses of Parliament,” to obviate any objections there might be to the form of opening in the speech of five days before; and it was conceived in the same spirit of respectfulness to both Houses and anxiety for their support.  But it expounded, more strongly and at more length than the former speech, the pressing reasons for unanimity now.  It surveyed, first, the state of Europe generally, dwelling on the ominous combination of Roman Catholic interests everywhere, and the perils to the Protestant Cause from the disputes among the Protestant Powers, and especially from the hostility of the Danes and the Dutch to the heroic King of Sweden, who had “adventured his all against the Popish Interest In Poland.”  It declared the vital concern of Great Britain in all this, if only because an invasion of Great Britain in behalf of the Stuarts was a settled part of the Anti-Protestant programme.  “You have accounted yourselves happy in being environed with a great Ditch from all the world beside.  Truly, you will not be able to keep your Ditch, nor your shipping, unless you turn your ships and shipping into troops of horse and companies of foot, and fight to defend yourselves on terra firma.”  Then, turning to the state of affairs at home, he insisted on the necessity of a general union in defence of the existing settlement.  One Civil War more, he said, would throw the nation into a universal confusion, with or without a restoration of the Stuarts, and, if with such a restoration, then with consequences to some that they did not now contemplate.  He made no express reference to the proceedings in the Commons of the last few days, but implored both Houses to abstain from dissensions, stand on the basis to which he and they had sworn, and join with him in real work.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Carlyle, III. 329-347.]

The appeal to the Commons was in vain.  After three or four more meetings, they resumed, Jan. 29, the subject of the answer to be returned to the message of the 22nd from the Other House.  By a vote of eighty-four to seventy-eight they resolved to go into Grand Committee on the subject.  This having been done, they resolved, Jan. 30, “That the first thing to be debated shall be the Appellation to be given to the persons to whom the answer shall be made.”  On this one point there was a protracted debate of four days, the oppositionists insisting that the appellation should be simply “The Other House,” as in the Petition and Advice, and the Oliverians contending that that was no name at all, that it had been employed in the Petition and Advice only