onstitutional questions
which, as he held, a Divine call had decided, and he resented yet more
the renewed claim advanced by Parliament to the sole power of
legislation. As we have seen, his experience of the evils which had
arisen from the concentration of legislative and executive power in the
Long Parliament had convinced Cromwell of the danger to public liberty
which lay in such a union. He saw in the joint government of "a single
person and a Parliament" the only assurance "that Parliaments should not
make themselves perpetual," or that their power should not be perverted
to public wrong.

[Sidenote: Dissolution of the Parliament.]

But whatever strength there may have been in the Protector's arguments,
the act by which he proceeded to enforce them was fatal to liberty, and
in the end to Puritanism. "If my calling be from God," he ended, "and my
testimony from the People, God and the People shall take it from me,
else I will not part from it." And he announced that no member would be
suffered to enter the House without signing an engagement "not to alter
the Government as it is settled in a single person and a Parliament." No
act of the Stuarts had been a bolder defiance of constitutional law; and
the act was as needless as it was illegal. One hundred members alone
refused to take the engagement, and the signatures of three-fourths of
the House proved that the security Cromwell desired might have been
easily procured by a vote of Parliament. But those who remained resumed
their constitutional task with unbroken firmness. They quietly asserted
their sole title to government by referring the Protector's Ordinances
to Committees for revision, and for conversion into laws. The
"Instrument of Government" was turned into a bill, debated, and after
some serious modifications read a third time. Money votes, as in
previous Parliaments, were deferred till "grievances" had been settled.
But Cromwell once more intervened. The Royalists were astir again; and
he attributed their renewed hopes to the hostile attitude which he
ascribed to the Parliament. The army, which remained unpaid while the
supplies were delayed, was seething with discontent. "It looks," said
the Protector, "as if the laying grounds for a quarrel had rather been
designed than to give the people settlement. Judge yourselves whether
the contesting of things that were provided for by this government hath
been profitable expense of time for the good of this nati