immediately assumed that it made them peers, and gave them a title to hereditary rank. They were addressed by Cromwell in his opening speech as "My Lords, and Gentlemen of the House of Commons." His speech was very short, for he complained of indisposition, the truth being, that the life of excitement, struggle, and incessant care for twenty years had undermined his iron frame, and he was breaking down; but he congratulated them on the internal peace attained, warned them of danger from without, and exhorted them to unity and earnestness for the public good. Fiennes, after the Protector's retirement, addressed them in a much longer speech on the condition of the nation. But all hopes of this nondescript Parliament were vain. The Other House no sooner met apart than they began inquiring into their privileges, and, assuming that they were not merely the Other House, but the Upper House, sent a message, after the fashion of the ancient peers by the judges, to desire a conference with the Commons on the subject of a fast. The Commons, however, who were by the new Instrument made judges of the Other House, being authorised to approve or disapprove of it, showed that they meant the Other House to be not an Upper House, but a lower House than themselves. They claimed to be the representatives of the people; but who, they asked, had made the Other House a House of Peers, who had given them an authority and a negative voice over _them?_ The first thing which the Commons did was to claim the powers of the new Instrument, and admit the most violent of the excluded members, for none were to be shut out except rebels or Papists. Haselrig, who had been appointed one of the Other House, refused to sit in it; but having been elected to the Commons, he appeared there, and demanded his oath. Francis Bacon, the Clerk of the House, replied that he dared not give it him; but Haselrig insisted, and being supported by his party, he at length obtained his oath, and took his seat. It was then soon seen that the efficient Government members were gone to the Other House, and Haselrig, Scott, Robinson, and the most fiery members of the Republican section now carried things their own way, and commenced a course of vehement opposition. Scott ripped up the whole history of the House of Lords during the struggle of the Commonwealth. He said--"The Lords would not join in the trial of the king. We called the king to our bar, and arraigned him. He was for his obstinacy and guilt condemned and executed, and so let all the enemies of God perish! The House of Commons had a good conscience in it. Upon this the Lords' House adjourned, and never met again; and it was hoped the people of England should never again have a negative upon them." But the hostility of this party was not to the Other House merely, it was to the Protectorate itself, which it declaimed against, and not only in the House, but out of it, setting on foot petitions for the abolition