Officers were met on the one hand, and the fifty or sixty Rump Members on
the other, it was suddenly told Cromwell that the Rump in its despair _was_
answering in a very singular way; that in their splenetic envious despair,
to keep out the Army at least, these men were hurrying through the House a
kind of Reform Bill,--Parliament to be chosen by the whole of England;
equable electoral division into districts; free suffrage, and the rest of
it! A very questionable, or indeed for _them_ an unquestionable thing.
Reform Bill, free suffrage of Englishmen? Why, the Royalists themselves,
silenced indeed but not exterminated, perhaps _outnumber_ us; the great
numerical majority of England was always indifferent to our Cause, merely
looked at it and submitted to it. It is in weight and force, not by
counting of heads, that we are the majority! And now with your Formulas
and Reform Bills, the whole matter, sorely won by our swords, shall again
launch itself to sea; become a mere hope, and likelihood, _small_ even as a
likelihood? And it is not a likelihood; it is a certainty, which we have
won, by God's strength and our own right hands, and do now hold _here_.
Cromwell walked down to these refractory Members; interrupted them in that
rapid speed of their Reform Bill;--ordered them to begone, and talk there
no more.--Can we not forgive him? Can we not understand him? John Milton,
who looked on it all near at hand, could applaud him. The Reality had
swept the Formulas away before it. I fancy, most men who were realities in
England might see into the necessity of that.

The strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of Formulas and
logical superficialities against him; has dared appeal to the genuine Fact
of this England, Whether it will support him or not? It is curious to see
how he struggles to govern in some constitutional way; find some Parliament
to support him; but cannot. His first Parliament, the one they call
Barebones's Parliament, is, so to speak, a _Convocation of the Notables_.
From all quarters of England the leading Ministers and chief Puritan