CHAPTER XXIII

Government of the Long Parliament. Harrington's Oceana. Changes in the Army. Booth's Insurrection. Lambert's Ambition. The Parliament again expelled. A Split in the Republican Party. Monk marches Southward. His Character. Royalist Reaction. The Convention Parliament. The Restoration. Fate of the Regicides.

THE government of the country was carried on by a council of state consisting of 31 members, 20 of whom were also members of the parliament; amongst them appeared the names of Sir Henry Vane, Sir Arthur Hesilrige, James Harrington, the author of the Oceana, Lieutenant-General Fleetwood, Colonel Algernon Sidney, and Mr Thomas Scot. Amongst those who were not members were the Lord President Bradshaw, Lord Fairfax, MajorGeneral Lambert, Colonel Desborough, Desborough, Colonel Berry, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and Sir Horatio Townsend, who was secretly in correspondence with Hyde, the agent of Charles Stuart. The military officers, Ludlow tells us, seldom came to the council, and "when they condescended to come carried themselves with all imaginable perverseness and insolence."

Vane was ordered to examine the financial position of the country. He reported a deficit of

£1,500,000,1 whereas, when Cromwell turned out the Long Parliament, there was a good stock in the treasury, and the pay of the army was in advance.

"Our treasury was so low," says Ludlow, through the maladministration of the late government, that though our plenipotentiaries to the two northern crowns had received their instructions, yet they were obliged to stay a fortnight longer before they could receive the sum of £2000 which had been ordered for expenses of their voyage, the taxes coming in but slowly, and the city of London, terrified with the reports of an expected insurrection, being very backward in advancing money."

Money, however, must be had to carry on the administration of the country, and, above all things, to pay up the arrears of the army. They tried to raise it by an income tax, and by increasing the customs; but, from the weakness of the executive government, they met with great difficulty in collecting the money in a country accustomed to the violent exactions of Cromwell's major-generals. No salary was claimed by the commissioners who conducted the government, though they voted themselves a bodyguard; and they had the courage to reduce the salaries of the public servants. Great exertions were

1 Colonel Birch said in Richard Cromwell's parliament that when the Long Parliament was put out there were 100,000 men in arms, carried out with a small charge. We left £600,000 and half as much out of Compositions, Weavers' Hall money, Dean and Chapter lands, and £120,000 per month laid.-Burton's Diary, vol. iii., pp. 58, 63, 64.

Mr Slingsby Bethel, in a pamphlet entitled The World's Mistake in Oliver Cromwell, reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, tells us that at the expulsion of the parliament, "the public stock was £2,000,000 in ready money, the value of £700,000 in stores, so that, if there might be a debt of nearly £500,000 upon the kingdom, he met with above twice the value in lieu of it."

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made to appoint sheriffs, justices of peace, and magistrates attached to republican principles, so as to secure their aid at the next election. It was probably the fear of holding an election with the old Cromwellian sheriffs and other magistrates which induced them to continue sitting. On June 6, 1659, they voted that they should cease to sit on May 7, 1660.

The strength of the republican party appeared greater in opposition to Richard Cromwell than when it again took the charge of affairs, for the royalists, who had reinforced it, now turned to pull it down. That prestige of vigour and success, so nobly earned by ceaseless watchfulness, able statesmanship, and great victories by land and sea, had been snatched away. Cromwell, who had reaped the fruits of what they had sown and watered, had done his best to calumniate them, while they had now to struggle against the confusion which he had left behind him.

Even those soldiers who openly regretted their fault in turning out the Long Parliament might be expected to repeat it, if their resentment should be aroused by any vote which displeased them. The government was thus weak; and no government will be respected, much less trusted, by the mass of people for wisdom alone. The Long Parliament, before its violent dissolution, could not claim to represent the whole of England; that it should represent the conquering party was a necessary result of the civil war. The excluded Presbyterian members soon appeared demanding their seats; nor was it easy for those, who had been chased out of the House by Cromwell, to show that they had a better right to vote than

those who had been chased out by Colonel Pride. At best, then, they were a provisional government who engaged to take the direction of affairs until a new parliament should be called; and, viewed as such, a better government could not at that time be had.

Those who still retained faith in republican ideas were discussing the best form of government. There was Rota club of which Henry Nevil, Major Wildman, and other republicans were members. They were in favour of the proposed magistrates and senators going out by rotation as in Venice and Switzerland. "The views propounded at this club," says Anthony Wood, "were very taking, the more because as to human foresight there was no probability of the king's return; and accordingly we find the opinions of Harrington or those of the Rota reproduced in the political speeches and pamphlets of that time.

James Harrington was a prominent debater at this club. He had attended the Prince of Orange in a visit which he made to the court of Denmark, and had travelled in France and Italy. The constitution of Venice, the oldest republic in Europe, where he resided some time, attracted his attention. It was, he said, a government for preservation. He admired the equality granted to those allowed to take a part in the government, but blamed its oligarchical tendency. In the year 1646 he was engaged by the commissioners appointed by the parliament to take the captive king from Newcastle and attend Charles, as one already known to him, and not engaged to any party nor faction. Charles was fond of his conversation about

tells us,

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books and foreign countries; and, as Anthony Wood they had often discourses concerning government, but when they happened to talk of a commonwealth the king seemed not to endure it." Being anxious to induce both parties to make conciliations he became suspected by the parliament, and was for some time under arrest, till liberated by MajorGeneral Ireton. He became a member of the council of state before Cromwell's usurpation, and was again a member when the Long Parliament was recalled. Harrington is known as the author of the Oceana, a book which, though never popular, has been often studied by philosophical politicians. Upon a tedious structure of political romance, Harrington introduces

number of original discourses upon political combinations, and examines with deep philosophical insight, the constitution of different governments, from those of the Greeks and Hebrews, down to those of the Dutch and Venetians.

Harrington was the first to give prominence to the view that empire follows the balance of property-that is, if the possessors of property be few in number, the government is an oligarchy. If one man hold in his hand the greater part of the property of a country, it is absolute monarchy; but if property be in the hands of the people the government becomes a commonwealth. In a country like England, as it was then constituted, it was natural that landed property should receive the greater share of his attention, for at that time the relative value over movable property was much greater, and a much larger part of the population was dependent for their subsistence on the cultivation of the soil. Nevertheless, he remarks, in such cities as