⚫ and break this Settlement?' If our spirits be dissatisfied, what will become of things? Here is an Army five or six months behind in pay: yea an Army in Scotland near as much 'behind;' an Army in Ireland much more. And if these things be considered,—I cannot doubt but they will be considered;-I say, judge what the state of Ireland is if free-quarter come upon the Irish People! [Free-quarter must come, if there be no pay provided, and that soon!] You have a company of Scots in the North of Ireland, Forty or Fifty thousand of them settled there ;' who, I hope, are honest men. In the Province of Galway almost all the Irish, transplanted to the West.* You have the Interest of England newly begun to be planted. The people there, ' in these English settlements,' are full of necessities and complaints. They bear to the uttermost. And should the soldiers run upon free-quarter there,-upon your English Planters, as they must,-the English Planters must quit the country through mere beggary: and that which hath been the success of so much blood and treasure, to get that Country into your hands, what can become of it, but that the English must needs run away for pure beggary, and the Irish must possess the country' again' for a receptacle to the Spanish Interest ?— And hath Scotland been long settled? [Middleton's Highland Insurrection with its Mosstroopery and misery is not dead three years yet.†] Have not they a like sense of poverty! I speak plainly. In good earnest, I do think the Scots Nation have been under as great a suffering, in point of livelihood and subsistence outwardly, as any People I have yet named to you. I do think truly they are a very ruined Nation. [Torn to pieces with now near Twenty Years of continual War, and foreign and intestine worrying with themselves and with all the world.]— And yet in a way (I have spoken with some Gentlemen come from thence) hopeful enough;—it hath pleased God to give that plentiful encouragement to the meaner sort in Scotland. I must say, if it please God to encourage the meaner sort-[The consequences may be foreseen, but are not stated here.]- -The meaner sort' in Scotland' live as well, and are likely to come into as thriving a condition under your Government, as when they were under their own great Lords, who made them work for their living no better than the Peasants of France. I am loath to speak anything which may reflect upon that Nation: but the middle sort of people do grow up there into such a substance as makes their lives comfortable, if not better than they were before. [Scotland is prospering; has fair-play and ready-money;-prospering though sulky.] * "All the Irish :" all the Malignant Irish, the ringleaders of the Popish Rebellion: Galway is here called ' "Galloway.' Feb., 1654-5 (Whitlocke, p. 599). 66 If now, after all this, we shall not be sensible of all those designs that are in the midst of us of the united Cavaliers; of the designs which are animated every day from Flanders and Spain; while we have to look upon ourselves as a divided people—[Sentence off.] A man cannot cer tainly tell where to find consistency anywhere in England! Certainly there is no consistency in anything, that may be worthy of the name of a body of consistency, but in this Company who are met here! How can any man lay his hand on his heart, and 'permit himself to' talk of things,—[Roots of Constitutional Government, “ Other House,” House of Lords" and such like] neither to be made out by the light of Scripture nor of Reason; and draw one another off from considering of these things, —' which are very palpable things !'--I dare leave them with you, and commit them to your bosom. They have a weight,—a greater weight than any I have yet suggested to you, from abroad or at home! If such be our case abroad and at home, That our Being and Wellbeing,—our Wellbeing is not worth the naming comparatively,—I say, if such be our case, of our Being at home and abroad, That through want to bear up our Honor at Sea, and through want to maintain what is our Defence at Home,' we stand exposed to such dangers ;' and if through our mistake we shall be led off from the consideration of these things; and talk of circumstantial things, and quarrel about circumstances; and shall not with heart and soul intend and carry-on these things! I confess I can look for nothing ‘other,' I can say no other than what a foolish Book* expresseth, of one that having consulted everything, could hold to nothing; neither Fifth-Monarchy, Presbytery, nor Independency, nothing; but at length concludes, He is for nothing but an "orderly confusion!" And for men that have wonderfully lost their consciences and their wits, I speak of men going about who cannot tell what they would have, yet are willing to kindle coals to disturb others - -! [An "orderly confusion," and general fire-consummation: what else is possible?] And now having said this, I have discharged my duty to God and to you, in making this demonstration,—and I profess, not as a rhetorician! My business was to prove the verity of the Designs from Abroad; and the still unsatisfied spirits of the Cavaliers at Home,-who from the beginning of our Peace to this day have not been wanting to do what they could to kindle a fire at home in the midst of us. And I say, if this be so, the truth, I pray God affect your nearts with a due sense of it! *Now rotting probably, or rotten among the other Pamphletary rubbish, in the crypts of Public Dryasdust Collections,—all but this one phrase of it, here kept alive. [Yea!] And give you one heart and mind to carry on this work for which we are met together! If these things be so,—should you meet to-morrow, and accord in all things tending to your preservation and your rights and liberties, really it will be feared there is too much time elapsed 'already' for your delivering yourselves from those dangers that hang upon you!— We have had now Six Years of Peace, and have had an interruption of Ten Years War. We have seen and heard and felt the evils of War; and now God hath given us a new taste of the benefits of Peace. Have you not had such a Peace in England, Ireland and Scotland, that there is not a man to lift up his finger to put you into distemper? Is not this a mighty blessing from the Lord of Heaven? [Hah!] Shall we now be prodigal of time? Should any man, shall we, listen to delusions, to break and interrupt this Peace? There is not any man that hath been true to this Cause, as I believe you have been all, who can look for anything but the greatest rending and persecution that ever was in this world! [Peppery Scott's hot head will go up on Temple Bar, and Haselrig will do well to die soon.*]—I wonder how it can enter into the heart of man to undervalue these things; to slight Peace and the Gospel, the greatest mercy of God. We have Peace and the Gospel! [What a tone!] Let us have one heart and soul; one mind to maintain the honest and just rights of this Nation ;-not to pretend to them, to the destruction of our Peace, to the destruction of the Nation! [As yet there is one Hero-heart among you, ye blustering contentious rabble; one Soul blazing as a light-beacon in the midst of Chaos, forbidding Chaos yet to be supreme. In a little while that too will be extinct; and then!] Really, pretend what we will, if you run into another flood of blood and War, the sinews of this Nation being wasted by the last, it must sink and perish utterly. I beseech you, and charge you in the name and presence of God, and as before Him, be sensible of these things, and lay them to heart! You have a Day of Fasting coming on. I beseech God touch your hearts and open your ears to this truth; and that you may be as deaf adders to stop your ears to all Dissension! And may look upon them 'who would sow dissension,' whoever they may be, as Paul saith to the Church of Corinth, as I remember: "Mark such as cause divisions and offences," and would disturb you from that foundation of Peace you are upon, under any pretence whatsoever! I shall conclude with this. I was free the last time of our meeting, He died in the Annus Mirabilis of 1660 itself, say the Baronetages. Worn to death, it is like, by the frightful vicissitudes and distracting excite. ment of those sad months to tell you I would discourse upon a Psalm; and I did it.* I am not ashamed of it at any time [Why should you, your Highness? A wora that does speak to us from the eternal heart of things, "word of God" as you well call it, is highly worth discoursing upon!]-especially when I meet with men of such consideration as you. There you have one verse which I forgot. "I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for He will speak peace unto His people, and to His saints; but let them not turn again to folly." Dissension, division, destruction, in a poor Nation under a Civil War,--having all the effects of a Civil War upon it! Indeed if we return again to "folly," let every man consider, If it be not like turning to destruction? If God shall unite your hearts and bless you, and give you the blessing of union and love one to another, and tread down everything that riseth up in your hearts and tendeth to deceive your own souls with pretences of this thing or that, as we have been saying—[The Sentence began as a positive, “if God shall;" but gradually turning on its axis, it has now got quite round into the negative side]—— and not prefer the keeping of Peace that we may see the fruit of righteousness in them that love peace and embrace peace,-it will be said of this poor Nation, Actum est de Anglia, 'It is all over with England !? But I trust God will never leave it to such a spirit. And while I live, and am able, I shall be ready [Courage, my brave one! Thou hast but some Seven Months more of it, and then the ugly coil is all over; and thy part in it manfully done; manfully and fruitfully, to all Eternity! Peppery Scott's hot head can mount to Temple Bar, whither it is bound; and England, with immense expenditure of liquor and tarbarrels, can call in its Nell Gwyn Defender of the Faith,and make out a very notable Two Hundred Years under his guidance; and, finding itself now nearly got to the Devil, may perhaps pause, and recoil, and remember: who knows? Nay who cares ? may Oliver say. He is honorably quit of it, he for one; and the Supreme Powers will guide it farther according to their pleasure.] -I shall be ready to stand and fall with you, in this seemingly promising Uniont which God hath wrought among you, which I hope neither the pride nor envy of man shall be able to make void. I have taken my The Eighty-Fifth; antea, pp. 387, et seq. 66 ac Oath [In Westminster Hall, Twenty-sixth of June last] to govern cording to the Laws" that are now made; and I trust I shall fully an swer it. And know, I sought not this place. [Who would have “sought" it, that could have as nobly avoided it? Very scurvy creatures only. The "place" is no great things, I think;—with either Heaven or else Hell so close upon the rear of it, a man might do without the "place!" Know all men, Oliver Cromwell did not seek this place, but was sought to it, and led and driven to it, by the Necessities, the Divine Providences, the Eternal Laws.] I speak it before God, Angels, and Men: I DID NOT. You sought me for it, you brought me to it; and I took my Oath to be faithful to the Interests of these Nations, to be faithful to the Government. All those things were implied, in my eye, in the Oath "to be faithful to this Government" upon which we have now met. And I trust, by the grace of God, as I have taken my Oath to serve this Commonwealth on such an account, I shall,—I must !—see it done, according to the Articles of Government. That every just Interest may be preserved; that a Godly Ministry may be upheld, and not affronted by seducing and seduced spirits; that all men may be preserved in their just rights, whether civil or spiritual. Upon this account did I take oath, and swear to this Government!-[And mean to continue administering it withal]—And sc having declared my heart and mind to you in this, I have nothing more to say, but to pray, God Almighty bless you.* His Highness, a few days after, on occasion of some Reply to a Message of his concerning the state of the Public Monies,'was formally requested by the Commons to furnish them with a Copy of this Speech: † he answered that he did not remember four lines of it in a piece, and that he could not furnish a Copy. Some Copy would nevertheless have been got up, had the Parliament continued sitting. Rushworth, Smythe, and 'I' (the Writer of Burton's Diary), we, so soon as the Speech was done, went to York House; Fairfax's Town-House, where Historical John, brooding over endless Paper-masses, and doing occasional Secretary work, still lodges: here at York House we sat together till late, comparing Notes of his Highness's Speech;' could not finish the business that night, our Notes being a little cramp. It * Burton, ii., 351-71. Thursday, 28 Jan., 1657-8 (Parliamentary History, xxi., 196; Burton, 'i., 2.79). |