Washington, is hardly to be found in the pages of history, but that
even Washington himself might not have been able to act his most
glorious of all parts without the existence of circumstances
uncommonly favourable, and almost peculiar to the country which was
to be the theatre of it. Virtue like his depends not indeed upon
time or place; but although in no country or time would he have
degraded himself into a Pisistratus, or a Caesar, or a Cromwell, he
might have shared the fate of a Cato, or a De Witt; or, like Ludlow
and Sidney, have mourned in exile the lost liberties of his country.

With the life of the protector almost immediately ended the
government which he had established. The great talents of this
extraordinary person had supported during his life a system
condemned equally by reason and by prejudice: by reason, as wanting
freedom; by prejudice, as a usurpation; and it must be confessed to
be no mean testimony to his genius, that notwithstanding the radical
defects of such a system, the splendour of his character and
exploits render the era of the protectorship one of the most
brilliant in English history. It is true his conduct in foreign
concerns is set off to advantage by a comparison of it with that of
those who preceded and who followed him. If he made a mistake in
espousing the French interest instead of the Spanish, we should
recollect that in examining this question we must divest our minds
entirely of all the considerations which the subsequent relative
state of those two empires suggest to us before we can become
impartial judges in it; and at any rate we must allow his reign, in
regard to European concerns, to have been most glorious when
contrasted with the pusillanimity of James I., with the levity of
Charles I., and the mercenary meanness of the two last princes of
the house of Stuart. Upon the whole, the character of Cromwell must