always preserved a Protestant element, which for some time was predominant, and which has never entirely perished. And if we desire to see what Popery makes nations in these days, we have only to cast our eyes on Belgium, which next to Ireland is the most popish country in Europe. We shall find there a fertile soil, a land offering immense resources, and a people once at the head of European manufactures and commerce, but of whom the fourth part is now reduced to mendicancy and is dying of hunger. Will it be said that here, as in England, the government is in fault? Impossible for the Belgian government since 1831 has been the most catholic in Europe. In consequence of the prevalence of jesuitism in that kingdom, subsequent to the Revolution, the number of priests has been augmented by 2600. More than 400 convents have been opened, whence issue in all directions Franciscan friars, capuchins, and other sluggards of the same brood (we are not aware if there are any Oratorians); and these priests and monks have invaded everything, enslaved everything.

The result soon appeared: Belgian pauperism has taken its place at the side of Irish pauperism; and in Belgium its intensity is in direct proportion to that of Popery. The wretchedness is far more aggravated in the Flemish provinces, which are entirely subject to the priests, than in the Walloon (French) provinces, which were once Protestant, and whose spirit is nearer that of Protestantism. "Such," says a correspondent,* "is the state to which Belgium has been reduced by the clerical party in less than fifteen years."

If therefore Oliver Cromwell loved Ireland, if he desired its happiness and prosperity, he must have wished above all things to see Popery and the mass disappear, and to behold the establishment of evangelical Christianity and of the Bible. But if his end was good, were the means he employed good also? Not altogether. Speaking to the leaders of the popish clergy, he said to them :-" If you come * In the Paris Journal, Le National.

into my hands, I shall cause to be inflicted the punishments appointed by the laws on you." If this was the way of proceeding in Cromwell's time, it is no longer so in ours.

As the Gospel is the only means of saving Ireland, how then can we impart to its wretched inhabitants this infallible remedy?

In the first place, let there be no attempt to introduce either a clerical and traditional religion, or a rationalist and Unitarian system. What we must give them is the Gospel, nothing but the Gospel, the entire Gospel. Fashionable people may amuse themselves in their drawing-rooms and boudoirs with Puseyite or Socinian notions; but a nation requires positive and living elements. Christianity in all its simplicity, with all its richness and its strength, can alone save from this mortal sickness.

If truth is the first means, christian love is the second. Charity never faileth: its effect is sure, it is a living word which shall never fall unto the earth. To preserve Ireland, there must be a great manifestation of the spirit of truth in the fruits of christian love.

I will add, however, a third means. A respectable ecclesiastical form is necessary to encourage the poor Catholics, whom the calumnies of their priests perpetually alarm with the disunion and disorder of Protestant sects. In their house of bondage, they have contracted certain wants which ought to be respected. The two Protestant churches, which are the most numerous in Ireland, the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian, present all that can be desired; but let them be circumspect, and walk together in harmony.

Another question here occurs: To gain the Irish people, must we not first put out of sight that which offends them, break the bonds which unite the Episcopalian church to the state, and by giving the former powerful community more liberty, give it also greater energy and life?

An eminent minister of the Church of England has elo

quently explained his views on this point.* I can give no decided opinion on the question, as I have not before me all the necessary elements. But it is evident, on the one hand, that the more protestantism shall appear in that country without those privileges which shock and repel the Irish people, the more, on the other hand, it will be able (as it ought) to act with freedom and with life, and the nearer also will be Ireland's conversion. We should learn how to sacrifice whatever becomes unnecessarily a stumbling-block to our brethren. If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee. Jesus Christ should be set before this people; but He should be without arms, without privileges, poor, meek, and lowly of heart.

In these thoughts we approximate to the ideas recently enunciated in connection with Ireland by one of the most estimable Christians and public men in England. 66 'I will call upon you, deserted as you may have been by men of first rate in the hierarchy and in the state, to look, under God's blessing, to your own exertions only. I believe that

wherever good is done on a christian principle, the blessing of the prophet will be found to be realized almost literally; the barrel of meal will never fail, and the cruse will never be exhausted, if there be a blessing from on high." We coincide with the worthy baronet's sentiments; we think that we may go still farther, and that if it were clearly established that the cause of evangelical Protestantism in Ireland has been abandoned by the state, then our own exertions would, under God's blessing, have far more strength and efficiency. Faith which worketh by love has power in spiritual things only.

Such thoughts as these were not altogether foreign to Cromwell. Although he desired to have recourse to the

* The Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel, in his Letter to the Bishop of Cashel.

† Sir Robert Inglis, Speech at the Annual Meeting of the London Hibernian Society, 18th May, 1847.

law against the chiefs of Popery, he was willing to behave very differently towards the people. We cannot forbear transcribing once more those noble words of his, which are worthy of being repeated by the Crown of England in the nineteenth century:-" As for the people, what thoughts they have in matters of religion in their own breasts I cannot reach; but shall think it my duty, if they walk honestly and peaceably, not to cause them in the least to suffer for the same. And shall endeavor to walk patiently and in love towards them, to see if at any time it shall please God to give them another or a better mind. And all men under the power of England, within this dominion, are hereby required and enjoined strictly and religiously to do the same."

This is the remedy. "Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth." (Is. ii. 10.) Let the ministers and parliament of England do all that is possible for them to do, and even more, to alleviate the misery of the sister country. God and Europe will demand an account of them. But for what is not in their power they will never be called to a reckoning. So long as her friends look to governmental measures only for a remedy adapted to heal the wounds of this people, Ireland will always be that "certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse." (Mark v. 25, 26.) One means alone can save her, as it saved this woman; and that will be, as soon as she shall have heard of Jesus and touched his garment. Then, after Popery has disappeared from her unhappy soil, she will feel in her body that she is healed of that plague.

Cromwell returned to London in the month of May, and was received by the Parliament and people "as a soldier who had gained more laurels, and done more wonders in nine months, than any age or history could parallel."

*Neale, History of the Puritans, ii. 554. London, 1837.

CHAPTER VII.

SCOTLAND.

Two Kings and two Loyalties-Charles II. in Scotland-Cromwell's Letter to the General Assembly and to the Scotch Commander in Chief-Battle of Dunbar-Dispatch to Parliament--The Edinburgh Preachers in the Castle-Cromwell's Letter-All Christians ought to preach Christ-The Malignants-Cromwell's Illness-Two LettersCromwell concerning his son Richard-Worcester-Prosperity of Scotland-Cromwell's Military Career-Two Symbols.

THE Scots had begun the great movement whose object was at once to resist the tyranny of the Stuarts and the tyranny of Rome, and which was destined to result in incalculable consequences for Europe. But now they retraced their steps, and put themselves in opposition to the Commonwealth of England. They wanted a leader. "With Oliver Cromwell born a Scotchman," says Carlyle; “with a Hero King and a unanimous Hero Nation at his back, it might have been far otherwise. With Oliver born Scotch, one sees not but the whole world might have become Puritan."*

Without shutting our eyes to the truth there may be in this passage, we find the cause of this northern war elsewhere. In spiritual things the Scots acknowledged Jesus Christ as their king; in temporal, they recognized Charles the Second. They had no wish that the latter should usurp the kingdom of the former; but they also had no desire that Cromwell should seize upon the Stuarts' throne. They possessed a double loyalty-one towards the heavenly king, and *Letters and Speeches, ii. 169.