In 1653, after twelve years of contest, all these parties had successively appeared and failed in their designs. They ought at least to have been convinced of this result, and it is certain that the public was so. The legal party, quickly thrust aside, had seen the ancient constitution and laws spurned and trampled under foot, and innovations penetrating on all sides. The party of political revolution witnessed parliamentary forms perish in the novel use to which it was wished to apply them; after twelve years of domination, it saw the House of Commons reduced, by the successive expulsion of the Royalists and the Presbyterians, to a very small number of members, despised and detested by the public, and utterly incapable of governing. The republican party seemed to have succeeded best; it had, in appearance, remained master of the field of battle; the House of Commons counted scarcely more than fifty or sixty members, all republicans. {220} They might believe and call themselves masters of the country; but the country resolutely refused to allow itself to be governed by them, and they were incapable of giving effect to their will in any quarter; they had no means of action either on the army or the people. No social bond or safety any longer subsisted; justice was not rendered, or, if it were, it was not justice; its administration was directed by party-spirit, chance, or malice. And not only was there an absence of all safety in the relations of society, but there was none even on the high roads; they were covered with robbers and brigands. Thus physical as well as moral anarchy prevailed, and the House of Commons and the republican council of state were utterly inefficient to preserve order.