A civil war may be needful for the deliverance of a country; but the recollections of it for a long while must be a misfortune, since those recollections exhibit the new state of things to the party on the opposite side as a result of force, not as a result of reason; and the remembrance of imposition ever involves a sense of wrong. Under this misfortune the triumphant Puritans laboured throughout the Protectorate.
After the Restoration the misfortune, in some respects, became heavier than before. The previous eighteen years had been to the Royalists years in which violence destroyed the Monarchy and the Church. They were the years of the _Great Rebellion_--so the political Revolution came to be named--and in that name, specious and plausible, although untruthful and unjust, lay much of the capital with which political leaders after the Restoration carried on their trade of oppression and wrong. The Puritans, they said, were rebels, for they had fought against the Crown: what they had done once they would do again. A valid defence was at hand, for the Puritans could show that there was nothing really inconsistent between their peaceful submission to the restored monarch, and the course which they had pursued under the Long Parliament; yet, although they could make out a case satisfactory to impartial men, over against their logic, however forcible, there stood some awkward facts of 1642 and the following years, upon which High Churchmen in the reign of Charles II. were never weary of ringing changes.
The Long Parliament had rested upon the Army; so had the constitution of the Protectorate. His Highness's rule had been fortified by his major-generals and his troops. For its good and for its evil it depended upon soldiers. A military despotism had become necessary from the confusion of the times; it alone could bring quiet to the country after political earthquakes. The regal sway had fallen into the hands of a great general, a great statesman, and a great patriot, who, because he combined these three characters, was able to work out benevolent designs for his country. So long as he held the baton, so long as he drew the sword, he could maintain his standing, but not a moment longer. He had immense difficulties to overcome. Episcopalians were almost all against him; very many Presbyterians stood aloof or offered opposition; Spiritual Republicans, Fifth Monarchy men were his torment; even Congregationalists, with whom he felt spiritual sympathy, wished for a more democratic government than he would allow; the Quakers neither loved nor feared him. Besides, he had political colleagues who, as statesmen, appeared in opposition. Also, old generals were looking after an occasion for making resistance. Vane and Haselrig, Harrison and Ludlow, disapproved of the policy of their former friend. They disliked the new Constitution; they were for placing the keys in the hands of Parliament, not in the hands of a single person. They regarded the Protector as the Greeks had regarded a tyrant. Monarchy they detested, Democracy they would enthrone; yet they saw amongst them a sovereign, mightier than any Stuart, only called by another name. And it became a germ of weakness in the new Constitution, that it had to be defended by arguments similar to those which availed for the support of the ancient monarchy. It could be said--and truly said--that English traditions, usages, genius, spirit, and social necessities, demanded a supreme head--the rule "of a single person." But the rule of a single person was the very thing so hateful to the Republicans, although connected with the modifying checks of a Parliament. Many saw that the reasons employed in favour of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate might be employed more consistently in favour of the restoration of Charles Stuart. This circumstance was felt by numbers who did not confess it.