its duty.  If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he found that the few members who remained after so many deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to themselves a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy.  But even when thus placed by violence at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power.  He gave the country a constitution far more perfect than any which had at that time been known in the world.  He reformed the representative system in a manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon.  For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the commonwealth; but with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an American president.  He gave the parliament a voice in the appointment of ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not even reserving to himself a veto on its enactments; and he did not require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his family.  Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the time and the opportunities which he had of aggrandising himself be fairly considered, he will not lose by comparison with Washington or Bolivar.  Had his moderation been met by corresponding moderation, there is no reason to think that he would have overstepped the line which he had traced for himself.  But when he found that his parliaments questioned the authority under which they met, and that he was in danger of being deprived of the restricted power which was absolutely necessary to his personal safety, then, it must be acknowledged, he adopted a more arbitrary policy.

Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at first honest, though we believe that he was driven from the noble course which he had marked out for himself by the almost irresistible force of circumstances, though we admire, in common with all men of all parties, the ability and energy of his splendid administration, we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even in his hands.  We know that a good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.  But we suspect, that at the time of which we speak, the violence of religious and political enmities rendered a stable and happy settlement next to impossible.  The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts.  That Milton chose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares the events of the Protectorate with those of the thirty years which succeeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals.  Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system.  Never before had religious liberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree.  Never had the national honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at home.  And it was rarely that any opposition which stopped short of open rebellion provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous