LETTERS CXXX.-CXXXIII. THE 3d of September, ever since Worcester Battle, has been kept as a Day of Thanksgiving; commemorative of the mercy at Dunbar in 1650, and of the crowning-mercy which followed next year; -a memorable day for the Commonwealth of England. By Article Seventh of the Instrument of Government, it is now farther provided that a Parliament shall meet on that auspicious Anniversary when it next comes round. September 3d, 1654, then shall the First Protectorate Parliament meet; successive Parliaments, one at least every Three years, are to follow, but this shall be the First. Not to be dissolved or prorogued for at least Five months. Free Parliament of Four-hundred; for England Three-hundred-and-forty, for Scotland Thirty, for Ireland Thirty; fairly chosen by election of the People, according to rules anxiously constitutional, laid down in that same Instrument, -which we do not dwell upon here. Smaller Boroughs are excluded; among Counties and larger Boroughs is a mere equable division of representatives according to their population; nobody to vote that has not some clearly visible property to the value of Two-hundred Pounds; all others to vote, or to be voted for,— except, of course, all such as have appeared against the Parliament in any of these Wars 'since the First of January, 1642,' and 'not since given signal testimony' of their repenting that step. To appearance, a very reasonable Reform Bill;-understood to be substantially the same with that invaluable measure once nearly completed by the Rump: only with this essential difference, That the Rump Members are not now to sit by nature and without election; not now to decide, they, in case of extremity, Thou shalt sit, Thou shalt not sit; others than they will now de. cide that, in cases of extremity. How this Parliament, in its Five. months' Session, will welcome the new Protector and Protectorate is naturally the grand question during those Nine or Ten Months that intervene. A question for all Englishmen; and most of all for Oliver Protector;-who, however, as we can perceive, does not allow it to overawe him very much; but diligently doing this day the day's duties, hopes he may find, as God has often favored him to do, some good solution for the morrow, whatever the morrow please to be. A man much apt to be overawed by any question that is smaller than Eternity, or by any danger that is lower than God's Displeasure, would not suit well in Oliver's place at present! Perhaps no more perilous place, that I know clearly of, was ever deliberately accepted by a man. 'The post of honor,'-the post of terror and of danger and forlornhope; this man has all along been used to occupy such. To see a little what kind of England it was, and what kind of incipient Protectorate it was, take, as usual, the following small and few fractions of Authenticity, of various complexion, fished from the doubtful slumber-lakes and dust vortexes, and hang them out at their places in the void night of things. They are not very luminous; but if they were well let alone, and the positively tenebrific were well forgotten, they might assist our imaginations in some slight measure. Sunday, 18th December, 1653. A certain loud-tongued, loudminded Mr. Feak, of Anabaptist-Leveller persuasion, with a Colleague, seemingly Welsh, named Powel, have a Preaching Establishment, this good while past, in Blackfriars; a PreachingEstablishment every Sunday, which on Monday Evening becomes a National-Charter Convention, as we should now call it there Feak, Powel and Company are in the habit of vomiting forth from their own inner man, into other inner men greedy of such pabulum, a very flamy fuliginous set of doctrines, such as the human mind, superadding Anabaptistry to Sansculottism, can make some attempt to conceive. Sunday, the 18th, which is two days after the Lord Protector's Installation, this Feak-Powel meeting was unusually large; the Feak-Powel inner-man unusually charged. Elements of soot and fire really copious; fuliginous flamy in a very high degree! At a time, too, when all Doctrine does not satisfy itself with spouting, but longs to become instant Action. 'Go and tell your Protector,' said the Anabaptist Prophet, That he has deceived the Lord's People; that he is a perjured villain,' -will not reign long,' or I am deceived; will end worse than the last Protector did,' the tyrant Crooked Richard! Say, I said it! A very foul chimney indeed, here got on fire. And 'MajorGeneral Harrison, the most eminent man of the Anabaptist Party, being consulted whether he would own the new Protectoral Government, answered frankly, No;—was thereupon ordered to retire home to Staffordshire, and keep quiet.* Does the reader bethink him of those old Leveller Corporals at Burford, and Diggers at St. George's Hill, five years ago; of Quakerisms, Calvinistic Sansculottisms, and one of the strangest Spiritual Developments ever seen in any country? The reader sees here one foul chimney on fire, the Feak-Powel chimney in Blackfriars; and must consider for himself what masses of combustible material, noble fuel and base soot and smoky explosive fire-damp in the general English Household it communicates with! Republicans Proper, of the Long Parliament; Republican FifthMonarchists of the Little Parliament; the solid Ludlows, the fervent Harrisons: from Harry Vane down to Christopher Feak, all manner of Republicans find Cromwell unforgivable. To the Harrison-and-Feak species Kingship in every sort, and government of man by man, is carnal, expressly contrary to various Gospel Strictures. Very horrible for a man to think of governing men ;-whether he ought even to govern cattle, and drive them to field and to needful penfold, except in the way of love and persuasion,' seems doubtful to me! But fancy a Reign of Christ and his Saints; Christ and his Saints just about to come,-had not Oliver Cromwell stept in and prevented it! The reader discerns combustibles enough; conflagrations, plots, stubborn disaffections, and confusions on the Republican and Republican-Anabaptist side of things. It is the first Plot-department, which my Lord Protector will have to deal with, all his life long. This he must wisely damp down, as he may. Wisely; for he knows what is noble in the matter, and what is base in it ; and would no. sweep the fuel and the soot both out of doors at once. Tuesday, 14th February, 1653-4. At the Ship-Tavern in the Old Bailey, kept by Mr. Thomas Amps,' we come upon the second lifelong Plot-department: Eleven truculent, rather thread *Thurloe, i., 641 ;-442, 591, 621. C |