No doubt, while Falkland fits perfectly into the line of English
progress and takes his place with obvious propriety among the Saints of
Constitutionalism in the vestibule of the House of Commons, while even
Hampden finds admission as the opponent of ship-money, the kind veil of
oblivion being drawn over the part he played as a leader in the
Revolution, Cromwell, though his hold over the hearts of the English
people is growing all the time, remains in an uncovenanted condition.
The problem of his statue is still, and, so far as England is concerned,
seems likely long to be, unsolved. Put him high or low, in the line of
kings or out of it, he is hopelessly incongruous, incommensurable, and
out of place. He is in fact the man of the New World; his institutions
in the main embody the organic principles of New World society: at
Washington, not at Westminster should be his statue.
What Puritanism did for England, and what credit is due to it as an
element of English character, are questions which cannot be settled by
mere assertion, on our side at least. In its highest development, and at
the period of its greatest men, it was militant, and everything militant
is sure to bear evil traces of the battle. For that reason Christianity
has always been in favour of peace and goodwill; let the Regius
Professor of Theology at Oxford, in his Christian philosophy of war, be
as ingenious and as admirable as he may. But sometimes it is necessary
to accept the arbitrament of the sword. It was necessary at Marathon, on
the plain of Tours, on the waters which bore the Armada, at Lutzen, at
Marston, at Leipsic, at Gettysburg. Darius, the Moors, Philip II.,
Wallenstein, Prince Rupert, Bonaparte, the Slave-owners, did not offer
you the opportunity which you would so gladly have embraced, of a
tranquil and amicable discussion among lime-trees and violets. On each
occasion the cause of human progress drew along with it plenty of mud
and slime, nevertheless it was the cause of human progress. On each
occasion the wrong side no doubt had its Falklands, nevertheless it was
the wrong side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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