The Protector Cromwell died in September, 1658. This wonderful man raised himself, from a private station, to the supreme power, and fulfilled his high functions with an ability and energy, which few occupants of a throne have ever displayed. He has shared the usual fate of those men, whose conduct and principles have placed them apart from the mass of mankind. No other man was ever in a position, which exposed him to the hatred and misrepresentation of so many parties. The royalists heaped on him unmeasured obloquy as a usurper. The High Church party denounced him as a foe to the hierarchy. The Presbyterians disliked and opposed him, as a friend of toleration. The ultra-republicans reproached him for his ambition, because he did not think England, in her existing condition, to be capable of a free republican government, and therefore retained in his hands the power which he believed to be indispensable to the peace of the state. The irreligious, of all parties, scoffed at him as a hypocrite and a fanatic, though the charge is somewhat inconsistent with itself.[305] That Cromwell had faults, may be freely acknowledged, by his warmest friends. That his course was always wise and justifiable, cannot be maintained; but it may be doubted, whether, if the circumstances of that stormy and critical period in which he lived were fairly weighed, and his character and conduct were sifted, with a candid spirit, it would not be found, that Cromwell deserves more of the applause of the friends of liberty and religion, than of their censures. It is certain, that his accusers yield to him the praise of qualities, which it is difficult to reconcile with the crimes that they impute to him. It is surprising to hear, from American writers, reproaches against Cromwell as a “usurper.”[306] This language is not strange from the lips of a royalist, or a High Church partisan, in England; but from an American, it is inconsistent, and unworthy of his position as a citizen of a great and free country, where public opinion ought to be decisively and steadily in favor of republican principles, and ought thus to form an august tribunal, whose verdict should be felt and respected throughout the earth.