dom, of constitutional rights,
when the champion who won its victories was fanatical zeal, and the rage
of theological controversy?

It is the glaring defect in Cromwell--a defect which he had in common
with many others of his time--that he threw himself into a revolution
having for its first object to remodel the civil government, animated
only with the passions of the collateral controversy upon ecclesiastical
government. He fought the battle which was to destroy the monarchy,
without any fixed idea or desire for the republican government which
must be its substitute. This was not the subject that had engaged his
thoughts or inflamed his ardour. When, therefore, the royalists had been
conquered, it is not at all surprising that he should have seen nothing
but the difficulties in the way of forming a republic. At this point of
his history some excuse for him may be drawn from the very defect we are
noticing. His mind had dwelt on no theory of civil government--to the
cause of the commonwealth his heart had never been pledged--and we can
hardly call him, with justice, as Godwin does, a traitor to the
republic. But, on the other hand, what a gap, what a void, does this
disclose in the mind of our hero? What should we say of one who had
plunged heart and soul into the French Revolution, conducted only by his
rage against the Roman Catholic hierarchy? Such a one, had he risen to
take a leading part in that drama, might have acted with greater wisdom
and moderation than ardent and patriotic men; the very absence of any
political opinion or passion might have enabled him to see more clearly
than others the position which they all occupied; but this would not
justify or palliate the original error, the rash, exclusive,
self-blinding zeal which had brought him into that position.

To the ecclesiastical controversy, Cromwell clings throughout with an
utter recklessness of the fate of civil government. When episcopacy had
been vanquished, and presbyterianism threatened to take its place, he
was quite as willing to plunge the whole kingdom into confusion and
anarchy in his opposition to this new enemy, as to the old. Those who
would defend him from the charge of personal ambition--all who excuse
his conduct at this period of the history, put this plea upon
record,--and without a doubt his hostility to presbyterianism was a very
great and leading motive with him in his opposition to the Parliament,
and his determination to preven