commission, which Cromwell, in his opening speech, had attributed to their call through him. They declared that they were appointed by the Lord, and would have greatly alarmed Cromwell had he not taken care to include amongst them a sufficient number of his staunch adherents. But they excited the same alarm in a variety of other classes. They set to work resolutely in cutting down the expenditure of the Government; they abolished all unnecessary offices; they revised the regulations of the Excise; reformed the constitution of the Treasury; reduced exorbitant salaries, and examined thoroughly the public accounts; they adopted measures for the sale of the confiscated lands, and enacted rules for the better registration of births, deaths, and marriages. They went further; they made marriage by a civil magistrate valid, and, indeed, necessary for the enjoyment of the civil effects of marriage. Marriage by a clergyman was left optional still. They next attacked the unequal and oppressive modes of raising the one hundred and twenty thousand pounds a month for the maintenance of the army; the assessments in some cases amounting to two, in others, to ten shillings in the pound. From taxation they proceeded to law, and prepared a Bill to abolish the Court of Chancery, in which the abuses and delays had been a constant source of complaint in petitions to Parliament for years. But they were not content with destroying the Court of Chancery, they set about a general reform of the laws. They contended that every Englishman should understand the laws of his country, and that by a proper digest they might be reduced to the compass of a pocket volume. They, in fact, anticipated Napoleon in his Code, and appointed a committee to make the necessary revision, and to weed the real and useful statutes out of the chaotic mass of contradictory, obsolete, and unjust laws which overlaid them; the dicta of judges in many cases superseded and prevented the original enactments, so that men's lives and properties were at the mercy, not of the decrees of Parliament, but the opinions of individuals. It may be imagined what a consternation this daring innovation excited throughout Westminster Hall, and all the dusky, cobwebby cells of the lawyers. A terrible cry was raised that a set of ignorant men were about to destroy the whole noble system of British jurisprudence, and to introduce instead the law of Moses!