till another consideration which escapes Mr. Macaulay in
his estimate of such usurpers as Cromwell and Buonaparte. A usurper is
always more terrible both at home and abroad than a legitimate
sovereign: first, the usurper is likely to be (and in these two cases
was) a man of superior genius and military glory, wielding the
irresistible power of the sword; but there is still stronger contrast--
legitimate Governments are bound--at home by laws--abroad by treaties,
family ties, and international interests; they acknowledge the law of
nations, and are limited, even in hostilities, by many restraints and
bounds. The despotic usurpers had no fetters of either sort--they had no
opposition at home, and no scruples abroad. Law, treaties, rights, and
the like, had been already broken through like cobwebs, and kings
naturally humbled themselves before a vigour that had dethroned and
murdered kings, and foreign nations trembled at a power that had subdued
in their own fields and cities the pride of England and the gallantry of
France! To contrast Cromwell and Charles II, Napoleon and Louis XVIII,
is sheer nonsense and mere verbiage--it is as if one should compare the
house-dog and the wolf, and argue that the terror inspired by the latter
was very much to his honour. All this is such a mystery to Mr. Macaulay
that he wanders into two theories so whimsical, that we hesitate between
passing them by as absurdities, or producing them for amusement; we
adopt the latter. One is that Cromwell could have no interest and
therefore no personal share in the death of Charles. "Whatever Cromwell
was," says Mr. Macaulay, "he was no fool; and he must have known that
Charles I was obviously a less difficulty in his way than Charles II."
Cromwell, we retain the phrase, "was no fool," and he thought and
_found_ that Charles II, was, as far as he was concerned, no difficulty
at all. The real truth was, that the revolutionary party in England in
1648, like that in France in 1792, was but a rope of sand which nothing
could cement and consolidate but the _blood of the Kings--that_ was a
common crime and a common and indissoluble tie which gave all their
consistency and force to both revolutions--a stroke of original sagacity
in Cromwell and of imitative dexterity in Robespierre. If Mr. Macaulay
admits, as he subsequently does (i. 129), that the regicide was "a
sacrament of blood," by which the party became irrevocably bound to each
other and separated fro