next LETTERS CXCII.-CXCV. 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 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 Fourhundred; 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 Smaller Boroughs are excluded; among Counties and larger Boroughs is a more 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 upon here. 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 decide 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 favoured him to do, some good solution for the morrow, whatsoever 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 honour,'-the post of terror and of danger and forlorn-hope: 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, loud-minded Mr. Feak, of Anabaptist-Leveller persuasion, with a Colleague, seemingly Welsh, named Powel, have a Preaching-Establishment, this good while past, in Blackfriars; a Preaching-Establishment every Sunday, which on Monday |
