d consistency.' Nay, he artfully converted the
very security of his Government into a proof that 'the pretended King'
would not have sent over his servants, and that the Royalists would not
'have actually risen' at Salisbury, had the insurrection been other than
'a general design,' based on a vast secret organization. No one in all
England possessed more certain knowledge, than did Cromwell, that such
was not the case, and that he could not plead in his behalf the poor
excuse, that the Nation as a Nation needed a severe lesson, or that it
was to save England from civil war that he had sacrificed the lives of
those fourteen victims of his deception, and consigned that band of
seventy or eighty Englishmen to the horrors of West Indian slavery.

But if Cromwell could not claim that excuse, what then was his motive?
Dark as was the light within him, he was not in such utter darkness as
to encompass himself about with written, spoken, and acted lies merely
to gratify caprice, or that he might indulge in causeless cruelty. His
motive was a very simple one. He was forced to obey his servant, the
Army. The men whom he had made, and who had made him, demanded a visible
share in the power and profit that he enjoyed. Reverting to the autumn
of 1654, much had then occurred to disquiet the Army. Cromwell had taken
a distinct step towards Kingship, by attempting to persuade Parliament
to make the Protectorate hereditary. Parliament had made a distinct
movement towards a large reduction in the Army and Navy. If rumour be
evidence, there was, during November, 'a great division in the army.'
And it is certain that, at the close of that month, Cromwell and his
military men came to terms. At a meeting held in St. James's Palace, the
staff of the army agreed 'to live and die with Cromwell.'[61] And a
train of events, occurring in direct sequence after that meeting, proves
that it was at this conjuncture that Cromwell agreed to parcel out his
Protectorship among the leading officers of the Army. Parliament was
dissolved 22nd January, 1655, on the pretext that under its shadow,
conspiracy and discontent had thriven; and Cromwell gave an alarming
account of the 'real dangers,' of imminent insurrection and anarchy,
that threatened England. That speech was the prologue; then came the
tragedy itself, the Insurrection of March, 1655; then came its
consequence, the appointment of the Major-Generals. And in the end, the
reason why they were appointe