Volume Vi Part 3 (1/2)

CHAPTER XII

THE PROTECTORATE

1653-1660

[Sidenote: The Sword unveiled.]

The thin screen which the continuance of a little knot of representatives had thrown over the rule of the sword was at last torn away. So long as an a.s.sembly which called itself a House of Commons met at Westminster, men might still cling to a belief in the existence of a legal government. But now that even this was gone such a belief was no longer possible. The army itself had to recognize its own position. The dispersion of the Parliament and of the Council of State left England without a government, for the authority of every official ended with that of the body from which his power was derived; and Cromwell, as Captain-General, was forced to recognize his responsibility for the maintenance of public order. The one power left in England was the power of the sword. But, as in the revolution of 1648, so in the revolution of 1653, no thought of military despotism can be fairly traced in the acts of the general or the army. They were in fact far from regarding their position as a revolutionary one. Though incapable of justification on any formal ground, their proceedings since the establishment of the Commonwealth had as yet been substantially in vindication of the rights of the country to representation and self-government; and public opinion had gone fairly with the army in its demand for a full and efficient body of representatives, as well as in its resistance to the project by which the Rump would have deprived half England of its right of election. It was only when no other means existed of preventing such a wrong that the soldiers had driven out the wrongdoers. ”It is you that have forced me to this,” Cromwell exclaimed, as he drove the members from the House; ”I have sought the Lord night and day that He would rather slay me than put me upon the doing of this work.” If the act was one of violence to the little group who claimed to be a House of Commons, the act which it aimed at preventing was one of violence on their part to the const.i.tutional rights of the whole nation. The people had in fact been ”dissatisfied in every corner of the realm” at the state of public affairs: and the expulsion of the members was ratified by a general a.s.sent. ”We did not hear a dog bark at their going,” the Protector said years afterwards. Whatever anxiety may have been felt at the use which was like to be made of ”the power of the sword,” was in great part dispelled by a proclamation of the officers. They professed that their one anxiety was ”not to grasp the power ourselves nor to keep it in military hands, no not for a day,” and their promise to ”call to the government men of approved fidelity and honesty” was to some extent redeemed by the nomination of a provisional Council of State, consisting of eight officers of high rank and four civilians, with Cromwell as their head, and a seat in which was offered, though fruitlessly, to Vane.

[Sidenote: The Convention.]

The first business of such a body was clearly to summon a new Parliament and to resign its trust into its hands. But the bill for Parliamentary reform had dropped with the expulsion of the Rump; and reluctant as the Council was to summon a new Parliament on the old basis of election, it shrank from the responsibility of effecting so fundamental a change as the creation of a new basis by its own authority. It was this difficulty which led to the expedient of a Const.i.tuent Convention. Cromwell told the story of this unlucky a.s.sembly some years after with an amusing frankness. ”I will come and tell you a story of my own weakness and folly. And yet it was done in my simplicity--I dare avow it was. . . .

It was thought then that men of our own judgement, who had fought in the wars, and were all of a piece on that account--why, surely, these men will hit it, and these men will do it to the purpose, whatever can be desired! And surely we did think, and I did think so--the more blame to me!” Of the hundred and fifty-six men, ”faithful, fearing G.o.d, and hating covetousness,” whose names were selected for this purpose by the Council of State from lists furnished by the Congregational churches, the bulk were men, like Ashley Cooper, of good blood and ”free estates”; and the proportion of burgesses, such as the leather-merchant, Praise-G.o.d Barebones, whose name was eagerly seized on as a nickname for the body to which he belonged, seems to have been much the same as in earlier Parliaments. But the circ.u.mstances of their choice told fatally on the temper of its members. Cromwell himself, in the burst of rugged eloquence with which he welcomed their a.s.sembling on the fourth of July, was carried away by a strange enthusiasm. ”Convince the nation,” he said, ”that as men fearing G.o.d have fought them out of their bondage under the regal power, so men fearing G.o.d do now rule them in the fear of G.o.d. . . . Own your call, for it is of G.o.d: indeed it is marvellous, and it hath been unprojected. . . . Never was a supreme power under such a way of owning G.o.d and being owned by Him.” A spirit yet more enthusiastic appeared in the proceedings of the Convention itself.

[Sidenote: Its work.]

The resignation of their powers by Cromwell and the Council into its hands left it the one supreme authority; but by the instrument which convoked it provision had been made that this authority should be transferred in fifteen months to another a.s.sembly elected according to its directions. Its work was, in fact, to be that of a const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, paving the way for a Parliament on a really national basis.

But the Convention put the largest construction on its commission, and boldly undertook the whole task of const.i.tutional reform. Committees were appointed to consider the needs of the Church and the nation. The spirit of economy and honesty which pervaded the a.s.sembly appeared in its redress of the extravagance which prevailed in the civil service, and of the inequality of taxation. With a remarkable energy it undertook a host of reforms, for whose execution England has had to wait to our own day. The Long Parliament had shrunk from any reform of the Court of Chancery, where twenty-three thousand cases were waiting unheard. The Convention proposed its abolition. The work of compiling a single code of laws, begun under the Long Parliament by a committee with Sir Matthew Hale at its head, was again pushed forward. The frenzied alarm which these bold measures aroused among the lawyer cla.s.s was soon backed by that of the clergy, who saw their wealth menaced by the establishment of civil marriage and by proposals to subst.i.tute the free contributions of congregations for the payment of t.i.thes. The landed proprietors too rose against a scheme for the abolition of lay-patronage, which was favoured by the Convention, and predicted an age of confiscation. The ”Barebones Parliament,” as the a.s.sembly was styled in derision, was charged with a design to ruin property, the Church, and the law, with enmity to knowledge, and a blind and ignorant fanaticism.

[Sidenote: Close of the Convention.]

Cromwell himself shared the general uneasiness at its proceedings. His mind was that of an administrator rather than that of a statesman, unspeculative, deficient in foresight, conservative, and eminently practical. He saw the need of administrative reform in Church and State; but he had no sympathy whatever with the revolutionary theories which were filling the air around him. His desire was for ”a settlement” which should be accompanied with as little disturbance of the old state of things as possible. If Monarchy had vanished in the turmoil of war, his experience of the Long Parliament only confirmed him in his belief of the need of establis.h.i.+ng an executive power of a similar kind, apart from the power of the legislature, as a condition of civil liberty. His sword had won ”liberty of conscience”; but, pa.s.sionately as he clung to it, he was still for an established Church, for a parochial system, and a ministry maintained by t.i.thes. His social tendencies were simply those of the cla.s.s to which he belonged. ”I was by birth a gentleman,” he told a later Parliament, and in the old social arrangement of ”a n.o.bleman, a gentleman, a yeoman,” he saw ”a good interest of the nation and a great one.” He hated ”that levelling principle” which tended to the reducing of all to one equality. ”What was the purport of it,” he asks with an amusing simplicity, ”but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord? Which, I think, if obtained, would not have lasted long. The men of that principle, after they had served their own turns, would then have cried up property and interest fast enough.” To a practical temper such as this the speculative reforms of the Convention were as distasteful as to the lawyers and clergy whom they attacked.

”Nothing,” said Cromwell, ”was in the hearts of these men but 'overturn, overturn.'” In December however he was delivered from his embarra.s.sment by the internal dissensions of the a.s.sembly itself. The day after the decision against t.i.thes the more conservative members s.n.a.t.c.hed a vote by surprise ”that the sitting of this Parliament any longer, as now const.i.tuted, will not be for the good of the Commonwealth, and that it is requisite to deliver up unto the Lord-General the powers we received from him.” The Speaker placed their abdication in Cromwell's hands, and the act was confirmed by the subsequent adhesion of a majority of the members.

[Sidenote: The Instrument of Government.]

The dissolution of the Convention replaced matters in the state in which its a.s.sembly had found them; but there was still the same general anxiety to subst.i.tute some sort of legal rule for the power of the sword. The Convention had named during its session a fresh Council of State, and this body at once drew up, under the name of the Instrument of Government, a remarkable Const.i.tution which was adopted by the Council of Officers. They were now driven by necessity to the step from which they had shrunk, that of convening a Parliament on the reformed basis of representation, though such a basis had no legal sanction. The House was to consist of four hundred members from England, thirty from Scotland, and thirty from Ireland. The seats. .h.i.therto a.s.signed to small and rotten boroughs were transferred to larger const.i.tuencies, and for the most part to counties. All special rights of voting in the election of members were abolished, and replaced by a general right of suffrage, based on the possession of real or personal property to the value of two hundred pounds. Catholics and ”Malignants,” as those who had fought for the king were called, were excluded for the while from the franchise.

Const.i.tutionally all further organization of the form of government should have been left to this a.s.sembly; but the dread of disorder during the interval of its election, as well as a longing for ”settlement,”

drove the Council to complete their work by pressing the office of ”Protector” upon Cromwell. ”They told me,” he pleaded afterwards, ”that except I would undertake the government they thought things would hardly come to a composure or settlement, but blood and confusion would break in as before.” If we follow however his own statement, it was when they urged that the acceptance of such a Protectorate actually limited his power as Lord-General, and ”bound his hands to act nothing without the consent of a Council until the Parliament,” that the post was accepted.

The powers of the new Protector indeed were strictly limited. Though the members of the Council were originally named by him, each member was irremovable save by consent of the rest: their advice was necessary in all foreign affairs, their consent in matters of peace and war, their approval in nominations to the great offices of State, or the disposal of the military or civil power. With this body too lay the choice of all future Protectors. To the administrative check of the Council was added the political check of the Parliament. Three years at the most were to elapse between the a.s.sembling of one Parliament and another, and, once met, it could not be prorogued or dissolved for five months. Laws could not be made nor taxes imposed but by its authority, and after the lapse of twenty days the statutes it pa.s.sed became laws, even though the Protector's a.s.sent was refused to them. The new Const.i.tution was undoubtedly popular; and the promise of a real Parliament in a few months covered the want of any legal character in the new rule. The Government was generally accepted as a provisional one, which could only acquire legal authority from the ratification of its acts in the coming session; and the desire to settle it on such a Parliamentary basis was universal among the members of the new a.s.sembly which met in September 1654 at Westminster.

[Sidenote: The Parliament of 1654.]

Few Parliaments have ever been more memorable, or more truly representative of the English people, than the Parliament of 1654. It was the first Parliament in our history where members from Scotland and Ireland sate side by side with those from England, as they sit in the Parliament of to-day. The members for rotten boroughs and pocket-boroughs had disappeared. In spite of the exclusion of Royalists and Catholics from the polling-booths, and the arbitrary erasure of the names of a few ultra-republican members by the Council, the House had a better t.i.tle to the name of a ”free Parliament” than any which had sat before. The freedom with which the electors had exercised their right of voting was seen indeed in the large number of Presbyterian members who were returned, and in the reappearance of Haselrig and Bradshaw, with many members of the Long Parliament, side by side with Lord Herbert and the older Sir Harry Vane. The first business of the House was clearly to consider the question of government; and Haselrig, with the fiercer republicans, at once denied the legal existence of either Council or Protector, on the ground that the Long Parliament had never been dissolved. Such an argument however told as much against the Parliament in which they sate as against the administration itself, and the bulk of the a.s.sembly contented themselves with declining to recognize the Const.i.tution or Protectorate as of more than provisional validity. They proceeded at once to settle the government on a Parliamentary basis. The ”Instrument” was taken as the groundwork of the new Const.i.tution, and carried clause by clause. That Cromwell should retain his rule as Protector was unanimously agreed; that he should possess the right of veto or a co-ordinate legislative power with the Parliament was hotly debated, though the violent language of Haselrig did little to disturb the general tone of moderation. Suddenly however Cromwell interposed. If he had undertaken the duties of Protector with reluctance, he looked on all legal defects in his t.i.tle as more than supplied by the general acceptance of the nation. ”I called not myself to this place,” he urged, ”G.o.d and the people of these kingdoms have borne testimony to it.” His rule had been accepted by London, by the army, by the solemn decision of the judges, by addresses from every s.h.i.+re, by the very appearance of the members of the Parliament in answer to his writ. ”Why may I not balance this Providence,” he asked, ”with any hereditary interest?” In this national approval he saw a call from G.o.d, a Divine Right of a higher order than that of the kings who had gone before.

[Sidenote: Cromwell's administration.]

But there was another ground for the anxiety with which Cromwell watched the proceedings of the Commons. His pa.s.sion for administration had far overstepped the bounds of a merely provisional rule in the interval before the a.s.sembling of the Parliament. His desire for ”settlement” had been strengthened not only by the drift of public opinion, but by the urgent need of every day; and the power reserved by the ”Instrument” to issue temporary Ordinances ”until further order in such matters, to be taken by the Parliament,” gave a scope to his marvellous activity of which he at once took advantage. Sixty-four Ordinances had been issued in the nine months before the meeting of the Parliament. Peace had been concluded with Holland. The Church had been set in order. The law itself had been minutely regulated. The union with Scotland had been brought to completion. So far was Cromwell from dreaming that these measures, or the authority which enacted them, would be questioned, that he looked to Parliament simply to complete his work. ”The great end of your meeting,”

he said at the first a.s.sembly of its members, ”is healing and settling.” Though he had himself done much, he added, ”there was still much to be done.” Peace had to be made with Portugal, and alliance with Spain. Bills were laid before the House for the codification of the law.

The plantation and settlement of Ireland had still to be completed. He resented the setting these projects aside for const.i.tutional questions which, as he held, a Divine call had decided, and he resented yet more the renewed claim advanced by Parliament to the sole power of legislation. As we have seen, his experience of the evils which had arisen from the concentration of legislative and executive power in the Long Parliament had convinced Cromwell of the danger to public liberty which lay in such a union. He saw in the joint government of ”a single person and a Parliament” the only a.s.surance ”that Parliaments should not make themselves perpetual,” or that their power should not be perverted to public wrong.

[Sidenote: Dissolution of the Parliament.]

But whatever strength there may have been in the Protector's arguments, the act by which he proceeded to enforce them was fatal to liberty, and in the end to Puritanism. ”If my calling be from G.o.d,” he ended, ”and my testimony from the People, G.o.d and the People shall take it from me, else I will not part from it.” And he announced that no member would be suffered to enter the House without signing an engagement ”not to alter the Government as it is settled in a single person and a Parliament.” No act of the Stuarts had been a bolder defiance of const.i.tutional law; and the act was as needless as it was illegal. One hundred members alone refused to take the engagement, and the signatures of three-fourths of the House proved that the security Cromwell desired might have been easily procured by a vote of Parliament. But those who remained resumed their const.i.tutional task with unbroken firmness. They quietly a.s.serted their sole t.i.tle to government by referring the Protector's Ordinances to Committees for revision, and for conversion into laws. The ”Instrument of Government” was turned into a bill, debated, and after some serious modifications read a third time. Money votes, as in previous Parliaments, were deferred till ”grievances” had been settled.

But Cromwell once more intervened. The Royalists were astir again; and he attributed their renewed hopes to the hostile att.i.tude which he ascribed to the Parliament. The army, which remained unpaid while the supplies were delayed, was seething with discontent. ”It looks,” said the Protector, ”as if the laying grounds for a quarrel had rather been designed than to give the people settlement. Judge yourselves whether the contesting of things that were provided for by this government hath been profitable expense of time for the good of this nation.” In January 1655, with words of angry reproach he declared the Parliament dissolved.

[Sidenote: The Major-Generals.]