In this council it was agitated as to the best form of government for England, whether a pure republic, or a government with something of monarchy in it. The officers were for a republic, the lawyers for a limited monarchy. Cromwell agreed that the government must have something of monarchy in it, and asked who they would choose if that were decided? The lawyers said Charles Stuart, or if they found him too much bent on power, his brother the Duke of Gloucester. There can be little doubt but that this was a feeler on the part of Cromwell, and as he was never likely to acquiesce in the restoration of a family which they had put down at so much cost, it would have the effect of causing him to proceed with caution. He had ascertained that the army was opposed to a king; the lawyers thought of no king but one from the old royal line. These were facts to be pondered. Meanwhile the Parliament, without proceeding to lay a platform for its successor, evidenced a jealousy of the ascendency of the army; it voted a reduction of one-fourth of the army, and of the monthly assessment for its support from one hundred and twenty thousand pounds to ninety thousand pounds. In June, 1652, it proposed a fresh reduction, but this was opposed by the military council, and in August the officers appeared at the bar of the House with a petition, calling the attention of the Parliament to the great question of the qualifications of future parliaments, to reform of the law and religious abuses, to the dismissal of disaffected and scandalous persons from office, to the arrears due to the army, and to reform of malpractices in the Excise and the Treasury. The contest between the army and the Parliament was evidently growing every day more active. The Commons had no desire to lay down their authority and, to retain their existence, even showed a leaning towards introducing a number of Presbyterians under the name of "Neuters." To such a project the army was never likely to assent, and Cromwell proposed, in the council at Whitehall, that Parliament should be at once dissolved, and a national council of forty persons, with himself at their head, should conduct affairs till a new Parliament could be called on established principles. The opinion, however, was that such a proceeding would be dangerous, and the authority of the council be looked upon as unwarrantable.