Mr. Goldwin Smith contributed to the Times of Saturday last,
one of his characteristically sledge-hammer letters in regard to the statue of Cromwell which the Government, in spite of its Irish allies, proposes to erect at Westminster. Cromwell was the arch-enemy of Home-rule. Instead of ending the Upper House he called it again into existence. He insisted on a high property qualification for the franchise. " Socialism or its embryo he encountered in the agitation of the Levellers, and he resolutely put it down." He did not disestablish the Church. "His ecclesiastical policy was not Disestablishment but comprehension. It was partly for seek- ing to abolish the public provision for the ministers of religion that he dismissed the Barebones' Parliament." Yet the present Ministry propose to give him a statue ! That is true ; but all the same we want Cromwell to have his statue,—so he admits, does Mr. Goldwin Smith. It should be an equestrian one. Cromwell, the great cavalry soldier, should be seated on his horse in buff coat and jack-boots, sword in hand. The sword need not actually be pointed at the Commons, for Cromwell was no mere swaggering soldier who hated civil government. He could bear very well with Parliamentarism, till it festered into Jacobinism and Particularism. Still, Cromwell in arms outside their House would remind the Com- mons that there is something in the world beside the dreary drip of dilatory declamation. There is a capital site for an equestrian statue just opposite Mr. Labouchere's house, at Poet's Corner.
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