d, was brought to light by a state of
affairs, very identical with that which had raised them to power.

Cromwell had renewed the attempt that he had made in the autumn of 1654,
and in his quest after Kingship he had come, during February 1657,
almost within sight of the throne. Again the army officers interfered;
and again Cromwell was forced to meet them face to face; to receive, on
this occasion, their protest against his acceptance of the Crown. He
made a compromise as he had done before; but in speech, he was not
conciliatory. If the Protectorate had been a failure, he told his former
comrades, it was their fault. It was they, and not he who had governed;
as for himself, 'they had made him their drudge upon all occasions: to
dissolve the Long Parliament,' and 'to call a Parliament or Convention
of their naming,' which proved so unsuccessful; and then another
Parliament, alike in unsuccess; and he concluded that catalogue of their
untoward interferences with his government, by reminding his hearers
that they thought it was necessary to have Major-Generals; adding that
so they 'might have gone on,' if they had not insisted on his calling
the Parliament of 1656, against his will, which had given them 'a
foil.'[62]

That speech is the most exceptional, in some respects the most
important, of all Cromwell's speeches. Spoken if not 'in haste,'
certainly 'out of the fulness of the heart,' that is caused by anger, it
is, though unusually brief, delightfully incautious. Being addressed to
men who could not well be deceived, the speech must be true, at least so
far as they are concerned, in every particular; it does not contain a
single appeal to God; and of no other among Cromwell's speeches, are the
original MS. notes in existence. This speech, of the utmost historic
importance, is essentially unheroic in tone and circumstance,--the
querulous complaint of a master against servants who have overmastered
him,--an assertion of supremacy made by a man, who felt that he was not
really supreme. But the singularity that attends the address to the
recalcitrant officers is not yet exhausted. Surprise may well be felt
that Carlyle, with this speech before him, ventured on the construction
of his false image of Cromwell, the Hero. Judged even as an ordinary
ruler, he must have been a very sorry Protector who, according to his
own showing, was only a sham supreme magistrate,--the minister, the
'drudge,' of his servants but real mas