Note 460 — Chapter X · (continued 2)

Mrs. Macauley, who had nothing of compromise or conciliation in her temper, and breathed the entire spirit of Vane and Ludlow, makes some vigorous and just animadversions on the favour shown to Cromwell by some professors of a regard for liberty. The dissenting writers, such as Neal, and in some measure Harris, were particularly open to this reproach. He long continued (perhaps the present tense is more appropriate) to be revered by the independents. One who well knew the manners he paints, has described the secret idolatry of that sect to their hero-saint. See Crabbe's Tale of the Frank Courtship.

Slingsly Bethell, an exception perhaps to the general politics of this sect, published in 1667 a tract, entitled "The World's Mistake in Oliver Cromwell," with the purpose of decrying his policy and depreciating his genius. Harleian Miscellany, i. 280. But he who goes about to prove the world mistaken in its estimate of a public character has always a difficult cause to maintain. Bethell, like Mrs. Macauley and others, labours to set up the Rump parliament against the soldier who kicked them; and asserts that Cromwell, having found £500,000 in ready money, with the value of £700,000 in stores, and the army in advance of their pay (subject, however, to a debt of near £500,000); the customs and excise bringing in nearly a million annually, left a debt which, in Richard's parliament, was given in at £1,900,000, though he believes this to have been purposely exaggerated in order to procure supplies. I cannot say how far these sums are correct; but it is to be kept in mind, that one great resource of the parliament, confiscation, sequestration, composition, could not be repeated for ever. Neither of these governments, it will be found on inquiry, were economical, especially in respect to the emoluments of those concerned in them.