Tomes have been written to prove whether Oliver was right or wrong in what he did at this time; but the Rump Parliament had no claim to be, either in law or fact, the representative of the English people, or of any part of them that really counted. There was no justification for its continuance, and no good whatever could come from permitting it to exist longer. Its actions, and especially its obstinate determination to perpetuate its own rule, without warrant in law, without the even higher and more perilous warrant of justice and national need, rendered it necessary that it should be dissolved. At the time Cromwell, without doubt, intended that it should be replaced by a genuinely representative body; and if he had possessed the temper, the self-control, the far-sighted patriotism, and the personal disinterestedness which would have enabled him to carry out his intentions in good faith, without thinking of his own interests, he would have rendered an inestimable public service and might have advanced by generations the movement for English liberty. In other words, if Cromwell had been a Washington, the Puritan Revolution might have been made permanent. His early acts, after the dissolution of the Long Parliament, showed a sincere desire on his part, and on the part of those whose leader he was, to provide some form of government which should secure justice and order, without leaving everything to the will of one man. His first effort was to summon an assembly of the Puritan notables. In the interim he appointed a new Council of State, with himself, as Captain-General, at its head. The fleet, the army, and the Independents generally, all hastened to pledge him their support, and England undoubtedly acquiesced in his action, being chiefly anxious to see whether or not the new Assembly could formulate a permanent scheme of government. If the Assembly and Cromwell together could have done this—that is, could have done work like that of the great Convention which promulgated the Constitution of the United States—all would have gone well.