deftitute of garrisons, and got as far as Worcester; where you came up with them by forced marches, and captured almoft the whole of their nobility. A profound peace enfued; when we found, though indeed not then for the first time, that you was as wife in the cabinet as valiant in the field. It was your conftant endeavour in the fenate either to induce them to adhere to those treaties which they had entered into with the enemy, or speedily to adjuft others which promised to be beneficial to the country. But when you faw that the bufinefs was artfully procraftinated, that every one was more intent on his own felfish interest than on the public good, that the people complained of the difappointments which they had ex perienced, and the fallacious promises by which they had been gulled, that they were the dupes of a few overbearing individuals, you put an end to their domination.. A new parliament is fummoned: and the right of election given to thofe to whom it was expedient. They meet; but do nothing; and, after having wearied themfelves by their mutual diffentions, and fully expofed their incapacity to the observation of the country, they confent to a voluntary diffolution. In this ftate of defolation, to which we were reduced, you, O Cromwell! alone remained to conduct the government, and to fave the country. We all willingly yield the palm of fovereignty to your unrivalled ability and virtue, except the few among us, who, either ambitious of honours which they have not the capacity to fuftain, or who envy thofe which are conferred on one more worthy than themselves, or else who do not know that nothing in the world is more pleafing to God, more agreeable to reafon, more politically juft, or more generally useful, than that the fupreme power fhould be vefted in the beft and the wifeft of men. Such, O Cromwell, all acknowledge you to be; fuch are the fervices which you have rendered, as the leader of our councils, the general of our armies, and the father of your country. For this is the tender appellation by which all the good among us falute from the very foul. Other names you neither have nor could endure; and you defervedly reject that pomp of title which attracts the gaze and admiration of the multitude. For what is a title but

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a certain definite mode of dignity; but actions fuch as yours surpass, not only the bounds of our admiration, but our titles; and like the points of pyramids, which are loft in the clouds, they foar above the poffibilities of titular commendation. But fince, though it be not fit, it may be expedient, that the highest pitch of virtue fhould be circumfcribed within the bounds of fome human appellation, you endured to receive, for the public good, a title most like to that of the father of your country; not to exalt, but rather to bring you nearer to the level of ordinary men; the title of king was unworthy the transcendant majefty of your character. For if you had been captivated by a name over which, as a private man, you had fo completely triumphed and crumbled into duft, you would have been doing the fame thing as if, after having fubdued fome idolatrous nation by the help of the true God, you should afterwards fall down and worfhip the gods which you had vanquished. Do you then, fir, continue your courfe with the fame unrivalled magnanimity; it fits well upon you;-to you our country owes its liberties, nor can you fuftain a character at once more momentous and more august than that of the author, the guardian and the preferver of our liberties: and hence you have not only eclipsed the achievemets of all our kings, but even those which have been fabled of our heroes. Often reflect what a dear pledge the beloved land of your nativity has entrusted to your care; and that liberty which fhe once expected only from the chofen flower of her talents and her virtues, fhe now expects from you only, and by you only hopes to obtain. Revere the fond expectations which we cherish, the folicitudes of your anxious country; revere the looks and the wounds of your brave companions in arms who, under your banners, have fo ftrenuously fought for liberty; revere the fhades of those who perifhed in the conteft; revere alfo the opinions and the hopes which foreign ftates entertain concerning us, who promife to themselves fo many advantages from that liberty, which we have fo bravely acquired, from the establishment of that new government, which has begun to fhed its fplen dour on the world, which, if it be fuffered to vanish like à dream, would involve us in the deepest abyss of shame ;

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and lastly revere yourself; and, after having endured fo many fufferings, and encountered fo many perils for the fake of liberty, do not fuffer it, now it is obtained, either to be violated by yourself, or in any one inftance impaired by others. You cannot be truly free unless we are free too; for fuch is the nature of things, that he, who entrenches on the liberty of others, is the first to lose his own and become a slave. But, if you, who have hitherto been the patron and tutelary genius of liberty, if you, who are exceeded by no one in juftice, in piety and goodness, should hereafter invade that liberty, which you have defended, your conduct must be fatally operative, not only against the cause of liberty, but the general interests of piety and virtue. Your integrity and virtue will appear to have evaporated, your faith in religion to have been fmall; your character with pofterity will dwindle into infignificance, by which a moft deftructive blow will be levelled against the happiness of mankind. The work which you have undertaken is of incalculable moment, which will thoroughly fift and expofe every principle and fenfation of your heart, which will fully difplay the vigour and genius of your character, which will evince whether you really poffefs thofe great qualities of piety, fidelity, juftice, and felf-denial, which made us believe that you were elevated by the fpecial direction of the Deity to the highest pinnacle of power. At once wifely and discreetly to hold the fceptre over three powerful nations, to perfuade people to relinquish inveterate and corrupt for new and more beneficial maxims and inftitutions, to penetrate into the remotest parts of the country, to have the mind present and operative in every quarter, to watch against furprise, to provide against danger, to reject the blandishments of pleasure and pomp of power;-these are exertions compared with which the labour of war is mere paftime; which will require every energy and employ every faculty that you poffefs; which demand a man fupported from above, and almost instructed by immediate inspiration. These and more than these are, no doubt, the objects which occupy your attention and engross your foul; as well as the means by which you may accomplish these important ends, and render our liberty at once more

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ample and more fecure. And this you can, in my opinion, in no other way fo readily effect, as by affociating in your councils the companions of your dangers and your toils; men of exemplary modefty, integrity and courage; whose hearts have not been heardened in cruelty and rendered infenfible to pity by the fight of fo much ravage and fo much death, but whom it has rather infpired with the love of justice, with a refpect for religion and with the feeling of compaffion, and who are more zealously interested in the prefervation of liberty, in proportion as they have encountered more perils in its defence. They are not strangers or foreigners, a hireling rout fcraped together from the dregs of the people, but for the most part, men of the better conditions in life, of families not difgraced if not ennobled, of fortunes either ample or moderate, and what if some among them are recommended by their poverty? for it was not the luft of ravage which brought them into the field; it was the calamitous aspect of the times, which, in the most critical circumftances, and often amid the most difaftrous turns of fortune, roufed them to attempt the deliverance of their country from the fangs of defpotifm. They were men prepared, not only to debate but to fight; not only to argue in the fenate, but to engage the enemy in the field. But unless we will continually cherish indefinite and illufory expectations, I fee not in whom we can place any confidence, if not in thefe men and fuch as thefe. We have the furest and most indubitable pledge of their fidelity, in this, that they have already expofed themselves to death in the fervice of their country; of their piety in this, that they have been always wont to ascribe the whole glory of their fucceffes to the favour of the Deity, whofe help they have fo fuppliantly implored, and fo confpicuously obtained; of their juftice in this, that they even brought the king to trial, and when his guilt was proved, refused to fave his life; of their moderation in our own uniform experience of its effects, and because, if by any outrage, they fhould disturb the peace which they have procured, they themselves will be the first to feel the miseries which it will occafion, the first to meet the havoc of the fword, and the first again to risk their

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-fives for all thofe comforts and distinctions which they have fo happily acquired; and laftly, of their fortitude in this, that there is no inftance of any people who ever recovered their liberty with fo much courage and fuccefs; and therefore let us not fuppofe, that there can be any perfons who will be more zealous in preferving it. I now feel myself irrefiftibly compelled to commemorate the names of fome of thofe who have moft confpicuously fignalized themselves in these times; and first, thine O Fleetwood! whom I have known from a boy, to the prefent blooming maturity of your military fame, to have been inferior to none in humanity, in gentleness, in benignity of difpofition, whofe intrepidity in the combat, and whofe clemency in victory have been acknowledged. even by the enemy: next thine, O Lambert! who, with a mere handful of men, checked the progrefs, and fuftained the attack of the Duke of Hamilton, who was attended by the whole flower and vigour of the Scottish youth; next thine, O Defborough! and thine, O Hawdey! who waft always confpicuous in the heat of the combat, and the thickest of the fight; thine, O Overton! who haft been moft endeared to me now for fo many years by the fimilitude of our ftudies, the fuavity of your manners, and the more than fraternal fympathy of our hearts; you, who, in the memorable battle of Marfton More, when our left wing was put to the rout, were beheld with admiration, making head against the enemy with your infantry and repelling his attack, amid the thickest of the carnage; and laftly you, who in the Scotch war, when under the aufpices of Cromwell, occupied the coaft of Fife, opened a paffage beyond Stirling, and made the Scotch of the weft, and of the north, and even the remoteft Orkneys confefs your humanity, and fubmit to your power. Befides thefe, I will mention fome as celebrated for their political wisdom and their civil virtues, whom you, fir, have admitted into your councils, and who are known to me by friendship or by fame. Whitlocke, Pickering, Strickland, Sydenham, Sydney, (a name indiffolubly attached to the interefts of liberty,) Montacute, Laurence, both of highly cultivated minds and polished taste; befides many other citizens of fingu

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