whole life committed Mr. Macaulay does not reproach
him--the consent to the execution of Lord Strafford--that indeed, as he
himself penitentially confessed, was a deadly weight on his conscience,
and is an indelible stain on his character; but even that guilt and
shame belongs in a still greater degree to Mr. Macaulay's patriot
heroes.

This leads us to the conclusive plea which we enter to Mr. Macaulay's
indictment, namely--that all those acts alleged as the excuses of
rebellion and regicide occurred after the rebellion had broken out, and
were at worst only devices of the unhappy King to escape from the
regicide which he early foresaw. It was really the old story of the wolf
and the lamb. It was far down the stream of rebellion that these acts of
supposed perfidy on the part of Charles could be said to have troubled
it.

But while he thus deals with the lamb, let us see how he treats the
wolf. We have neither space nor taste for groping through the long and
dark labyrinth of Cromwell's proverbial duplicity and audacious
apostacy: we shall content ourselves with two facts, which, though
stated in the gentlest way by Mr. Macaulay, will abundantly justify the
opinion which all mankind, except a few republican zealots, hold of that
man's sincerity, of whose abilities, wonderful as they were, the most
remarkable, and perhaps the most serviceable to his fortunes, was his
hypocrisy; so much so, that South--a most acute observer of mankind, and
who had been educated under the Commonwealth and Protectorate--in his
sermon on "Worldly Wisdom," adduces Cromwell as an instance of "habitual
dissimulation and imposture." Oliver, Mr. Macaulay tells us, modelled
his army on the principle of composing it of men fearing God, and
zealous for _public liberty_, and in the very next page he is forced to
confess that

thirteen years followed in which for the first and the last time the
civil power of our country was subjected to military dictation.--i.
120.

Again,

Oliver had made his choice. He had kept the hearts of his soldiers,
but he had _broken_ with every other class of his fellow citizens.--i.
129.

That is, he had broken through all the promises, pledges, and specious
pretences by which he had deceived and enslaved the nation, which Mr.
Macaulay calls with such opportune _naivete, his fellow citizens_! Then
follows, not a censure of this faithless usurpation, but many laboured
apologies, and even defences of i