t you mistake, sir, if you
think the Parliament dissolved. No power on earth can dissolve the
Parliament but itself, be sure of that!"

CHAPTER XII

THE PROTECTORATE

1653-1660

[Sidenote: The Sword unveiled.]

The thin screen which the continuance of a little knot of
representatives had thrown over the rule of the sword was at last torn
away. So long as an assembly which called itself a House of Commons met
at Westminster, men might still cling to a belief in the existence of a
legal government. But now that even this was gone such a belief was no
longer possible. The army itself had to recognize its own position. The
dispersion of the Parliament and of the Council of State left England
without a government, for the authority of every official ended with
that of the body from which his power was derived; and Cromwell, as
Captain-General, was forced to recognize his responsibility for the
maintenance of public order. The one power left in England was the power
of the sword. But, as in the revolution of 1648, so in the revolution of
1653, no thought of military despotism can be fairly traced in the acts
of the general or the army. They were in fact far from regarding their
position as a revolutionary one. Though incapable of justification on
any formal ground, their proceedings since the establishment of the
Commonwealth had as yet been substantially in vindication of the rights
of the country to representation and self-government; and public opinion
had gone fairly with the army in its demand for a full and efficient
body of representatives, as well as in its resistance to the project by
which the Rump would have deprived half England of its right of
election. It was only when no other means existed of preventing such a
wrong that the soldiers had driven out the wrongdoers. "It is you that
have forced me to this," Cromwell exclaimed, as he drove the members
from the House; "I have sought the Lord night and day that He would
rather slay me than put me upon the doing of this work." If the act was
one of violence to the little group who claimed to be a House of
Commons, the act which it aimed at preventing was one of violence on
their part to the constitutional rights of the whole nation. The people
had in fact been "dissatisfied in every corner of the realm" at the
state of public affairs: and the expulsion of the members was ratified
by a general assent. "We did not hear a dog bark at their going," the
Pro