BOOKS.
GARDINER'S "HISTORY OF THE COMMON- WEALTH."
Mn. GARDINER belongs to that brilliant group of historians who were the pride of English literature in the " sixties " and "seventies." He is, fortunately, not the sole survivor, but he is the only one who still pursues his proper vocation with unabated vigour. Our regrets for the passing away or silence of those older historians are the more acute as they have left so few successors. There are learned historical scholars at the Universities, but they confine themselves for the most part to the collection and criticism of materials, or to the composition of manuals for the use of schools and Colleges. The long history, which it took years to write, and weeks, or perhaps months, to read, is no longer attempted. The younger scholars are, perhaps, deterred by the ever-grow- ing mass of materials with which a modern historian has to deal, or it may be that they distrust the patience of the modern reader. If the latter is the cause of their silence we think they are mistaken. The results of genuine research, presented without pedantry, will always find readers who will turn with a sense of relief from the Student's Cram-Book to works which unfold the life of a nation in that leisurely fashion which does not torture the memory, and offers matter for thought. The continued popularity of the works of Mr. Gardiner is a proof that the taste for true history is not ex- tinct. His great work has now reached its sixteenth volume, and every fresh instalment receives a warmer welcome than its predecessor. Mr. Gardiner's qualities as an historian are, indeed, exactly those which inspire increased confidence on longer acquaintance. He does not practise the art of the historical portrait-painter,—an art which made the fame of certain historians; but as such portraits are rarely free from exaggeration, his writings escape the reaction of distrust which is the penalty which exagvration must ultimately pay. Mr. Gardiner's art, or science as it might more justly be called, is sincere as the sunlight. He allows his characters to interpret themselves by their own acts and words. Con- temporary evidence is also cited to throw light upon their motives and to explain the external circumstances by which they were affected. By this treatment both heroes and villains lose something of their stage stature, but they become more credible; the reader feels that he is moving in a real world, not witnessing a performance in a theatre specially lightened and darkened by an ingenious manager.
The leading personage in Mr. Gardiner's latest volume is Cromwell, who of all the characters in English history requires an interpreter with an incorruptible love of truth. To do justice to him and to his contemporaries one must remember that the true parallel to the times of the Commonwealth is the Revolutionary period in France. Like the Revolutionists of France, the men of the English Commonwealth believed that they had a call to make all things new. This it was that hindered them from becoming creators of anything permanent. The work of Cromwell, Mr. Gardiner admits, was mainly that of a destroyer. He broke the power of the
• HistoGryarle the Commonwealth and Protectorate, Z60-1660. By Samuel Haws= r, D.O.L., LL.D. Vol. IL London: Longman:: and Co. PLO
King, of the Episcopal clergy, of the Presbyterian clergy, and of the Scottish Army, on which they relied. Finally, by dis- solving the Long Parliament, "he broke the power of the little knot of men who, with Parliamentary government on their lips, bitterly distrusted the nation on which all Parlia- mentary right was based." Cromwell, although a. destroyer, always entered upon the work of destruction with unfeigned reluctance. His hesitations, which have been set down to hypocrisy, were the result of the conflict of crude religions hopes with sober reason in a mind of much natural sagacity.
This was manifest in his conduct with regard to the Long Parliament. When he had to choose between Vane's scheme for recruiting the existing Parliament and Harrison's scheme of erecting an Assembly of pious and virtuous men, he could not bring himself, for some time, to make a definite choice. His religious principles inclined him towards the latter course, but his natural sagacity warned him of the dangers arising out of a complete breach with the past. He had said on a former occasion : "If it have but the face of authority, if it be but a hare swimming over the Thames, I will take hold of it rather than let it go." The fatuous course pursued by Parlia- ment decided its own fate. Cromwell arose in the wrath often so terrible to his enemies, and expelled the Members. In his final action there was little trace of hesitation ; but he only spoke the language of truth when he exclaimed as the Mem- bers trooped past him : "I have sought the Lord night and day that he would rather slay me than put me unto the doing of this thing." Mr. Gardiner maintains that the dissolution of the Parliament was unavoidable, for it had earned universal contempt through the extortions and 'greediness of its Members. Their scheme for recruiting their numbers by Members acceptable to themselves, if carried out, would have caused a second Revolution. But Cromwell departed from sound policy when he attempted to replace them by a nominated Parliament. To the work of reconstruction, as Mr. Gardiner remarks, his intellect could never rise, massive as it was. Cromwell having given his adhesion to the party headed by Harrison, which held that the earth is to be ruled by saints, not by elected Parliaments, a new body was chosen by an Army Council from lists sent up by the Independent Churches. The new body was permitted by a small majority to retain the name of Parliament, but it had no claim to represent the nation. When Cromwell met the nominees of the Army Council and Independent Churches at White- hall, his speech to them clearly betrayed that there was a doubt in his mind whether the land which had rejected the
divine right of its king would permanently bow before the divine right of a victorious Army. Mr. Gardiner thus describes his speech :— " Yet Cromwell could not but feel that the extraordinary course which he had adopted was too strongly opposed to the national habits to be permanently accepted. He had himself, before the dissolution of the Long Parliament, recommended the constitution of a small governing body merely as a temporary experiment, and even under the gusts of strong emotion he could not entirely throw common-sense aside. Some time, he added, and the sooner the better, the people would be fit to exercise the liberty of elec- tion, but what better way was there to make them fit than by exhibiting before their eyes a Government whose humble and godly conversation might win them to the love of godliness ? At least convince them that, as men fearing God have fought them out of their bondage under regal power, so men fearing God do now rule them in the fear of God, and take care to administer good to them.' With much quotation from the Psalms Cromwell ended in a dithyrambic fervour, blessing the work which the chosen saints were to execute to the honour of God The spirit of the Fifth Monarchist was strong within him, as he rushed forward into the unknown future as impetuously as he had charged at Marston Moor or Naseby. Yet those who cared to remember how he had drawn rein on the battlefield, and had looked back to survey the course of the struggle behind him, might safely predict that the time would come, perhaps at no distant moment, when his practical sense would regain the mastery, and he would ask himself whether the work of those whom he now lauded as the instruments of divine providence, had answered to his glowing anticipations."
With the resignation of the nominated Parliament and the appointment of Cromwell as Lord Protector began, according to Mr. Gardiner, the downfall of Puritanism. Henceforth Cromwell's Puritan zeal was modified by political and mundane considerations. The Extreme party separated themselves from him, and began the long chorus of detraction which was to pursue his name, styling him "the dissemblingest perjured villain in the world."
Mr. Gardiner does not bestow upon Cromwell's foreign
policy the unqualified eulogy of which it has often been the subject. "Guided by faith and matchless fortitude," it may have been, as Milton writes. The conviction, too, that deeds would follow his words had unquestionably a wholesome effect on foreign nations, and the prestige of England stood high on the Continent. Cromwell, however, harboured designs against the peace of Europe which, if he had been allowed to carry them out, would have produced disasters greater than those of the Thirty Years' War. His infatuation in matters of foreign policy proceeded from an overweening confidence in the power of England, and from his ignorance of the changes which had been brought about by the Treaties of Westphalia. There no longer existed a European con- spiracy against Protestantism, which in Elizabethan times made it the interest and duty of England to champion Continental Protestantism. Cromwell's mind, however, still worked on the lines of the Elizabethan period, as is evident from the amazing proposals which he made to the United Provinces. The war with the Dutch had always been distasteful to him, not that he doubted the justice of England's quarrel, but because the Dutch were Protestants and Republicans. Before he became Lord Protector, but while he was the most influential member of the Council of State, he proposed that England and the United Provinces should bind themselves in a perpetual alliance, each being ready to undertake war, offensive and defensive, against the enemies of the other. The alliance, which was to include, if possible, all Protestant States, was to turn its arms against the States which maintained the Inquisition. To make the plan the more palatable to the English and Dutch, both keen traders, he farther proposed that England and the United Provinces should divide between them the Eastern and Western worlds, England receiving America, and the United Provinces, Asia, as their modest shares. Nor were the wishes of the pions overlooked, for both nations were to bind themselves to send missionaries to teach the Gospel of Christ, to all peoples willing to receive them. Fortunately, the Dutch, who had just emerged from the long agony of the Spanish war, did not accept the alluring pro- posals. But Cromwell did not cease to labour for peace with them; for although he was prepared to deluge Catholic Europe with blood, he shed tears when he spoke of the un- happy war with Protestant brethren. During the first year of the Protectorate a peace was signed in London. On the following day the Protector entertained the Ambassadors to dinner, and after dinner there was a musical performance. At its close Oliver took a copy of a metrical version of the 133rd Psalm, not of the 23rd Psalm, as Mr. Gardiner writes, with an unwonted lapse into inaccuracy : "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." "We have," said Oliver, as he handed it to the Ambassadors, "exchanged many papers, but I think that this is the best of them."
With one remark of Mr. Gardiner's we cannot quite concur. Cromwell, he says, was eager to make the best of both worlds for his country, and the tragedy of his career lies in the in- evitable result that his efforts to establish religion melted away as the morning mist, whilst his abiding influence was built upon the vigour with which he promoted the material aims of his countrymen. As a dominating power the Puritanism of Cromwell passed away, as it was bound to do; but it left a tradition of seriousness in thought and purpose which has been an important factor in the life of the English race both at home and on the other aids of the Atlantic.
Cromwell's influence among his countrymen can, therefore, never die out. He represented, too truly, what is best and most vital in the English character. Whenever the Anglo- Saxon race recognises in some leader or statesman the highest form of patriotism, it is sure to find in him something of Cromwell's fortitude and devotion.
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