establish. Of the many Lives of this great man, with which the biography
of this nation has been augmented, perhaps not one is written with a
true dispassionate candour. Men are divided in their sentiments
concerning the measures which, at that critical Æra, were pursued by
contending factions. The writers, who have undertaken to review those
unhappy times, have rather struggled to defend a party, to which they
may have been swayed by education or interest, than, by stripping
themselves of all partiality, to dive to the bottom of contentions in
search of truth. The heats of the Civil War produced such animosities,
that the fervour which then prevailed, communicated itself to posterity,
and, though at the distance of a hundred years, has not yet subsided. It
will be no wonder then if Mr. Banks's Review is not found altogether
impartial. He has, in many cases, very successfully defended Cromwell;
he has yielded his conduct, in others, to the just censure of the world.
But were a Whig and a Tory to read this book, the former would pronounce
him a champion for liberty, and the latter would declare him a subverter
of truth, an enemy to monarchy, and a friend to that chaos which Oliver
introduced.

Mr. Banks, by his early principles, was, no doubt, biassed to the Whig
interest, and, perhaps, it may be true, that in tracing the actions of
Cromwell, he may have dwelt with a kind of increasing pleasure on the
bright side of his character, and but slightly hinted at those facts on
which the other party fasten, when they mean to traduce him as a
parricide and an usurper. But supposing the allegation to be true, Mr.
Banks, in this particular, has only discovered the common failing of
humanity: prejudice and partiality being blemishes from which the mind
of man, perhaps, can never be entirely purged.

Towards the latter end of Mr. Banks's life, he was employed in writing