The Protector opened this purged Parliament with a very long speech, which was one of the most remarkable speeches ever addressed to Parliament by any ruler. It displayed a depth and breadth of policy, an active, earnest spirit of national business, a comprehension of and desire for the establishment of such principles and prosperous measures, a recognition of the rights of the whole world as affected by the conduct of this one great nation, which have no parallel for true Christian philosophy since the days of Alfred. We have since then had great and valiant warriors, our Edwards and Henrys, but not a man who combined with the highest military genius and success a genuine, lofty, and loving Christian sentiment, and an earnest business-like mind like Cromwell. He at once laid down the principle that all hostility to the Commonwealth originated in the hatred of its free and Christian character; and he showed that all these enemies, of whatever theories, had united themselves with Spain, which was the grand adversary of this country, and had been so from the Reformation, because she was bigotedly wedded to the system of Popery, with all its monks, Jesuits, and inquisitors. He recapitulated its attempts to destroy Elizabeth and her religion; the vain attempts of the Long Parliament to make peace with it, because in any treaty where the Pope could grant absolution, you were bound and they were loose; the murder of Ascham, the Long Parliament's ambassador, and no redress obtained: and now he informed them, and offered to produce the proofs, that Charles Stuart had put himself in league with Spain, and, still more strange, that the Levellers, pretending to demand a freer and more Republican Government, had entered into the unnatural alliance with Charles and Spain to murder him and destroy the Commonwealth. [Illustration: ADMIRAL BLAKE.]