“Squire, I want to get out of a country where its rulers can stop minding its desperate poverty, and can forget that it is on the edge of rebellion, and in the grip of some death they call cholera, and go home for their Easter holiday, quite satisfied with themsens. We want another Oliver Cromwell.”
“No, we don’t either. The world won’t be ready for another Cromwell, not for a thousand years maybe. Such men are only born at the rate of one in a millennium.”
“There wer’ men of the right kind in Cromwell’s day to stand by him.”
“Our fathers were neither better nor worse than oursens, Sam, just about thy measure, and my measure.”
“I doan’t know, sir. They fought King and Parliament, and got all they wanted. Then they went over seas and founded a big republic, and all hes gone well with them--and we could do the same.”
“Well, then, you hev been doing something like the same thing iver since Cromwell lived. Your people are busy at the same trade now. The English army is made up of working men. They are usually thrown in ivery part of the world, taking a sea port, or a state, or a few fertile islands that are lying loose and uncivilized in the southern seas. They do this for the glory and profit of England and in such ways they hev made pagans live like Christians, and taught people to obey the just laws of England, that hed niver before obeyed a decent law of any kind.”
“They don’t get for their work what Cromwell’s men got.”
“They don’t deserve it. Your mark can’t touch Cromwell’s mark; it was far above your reach. Your object is mainly a selfish one. You want more money, more power, and you want to do less work than you iver did. Cromwell’s men wanted one thing first and chiefly--the liberty to worship God according to their conscience. They got what they wanted for their day and generation, and before they settled in America, they made a broad path ready for John Wesley. Yes, indeed, Oliver Cromwell made John Wesley possible. Now, when you go to the wonderful new loom that hes been invented for you, and work it cheerfully, you’ll get your Bill, and all other things reasonable that you want.”
“The Parliament men are so everlastingly slow, squire,” said an old man sitting almost at the squire’s feet.