At the beginning, everything seemed to go well. He opened the Parliament with one of those noteworthy speeches of which some seventeen have been preserved; speeches in the proper sense, unquestionably better when spoken to listeners than when read by critics, but instinct with the rough power of the speaker, permeated with religious fervor and sincere striving after the right; and even where the reasoning is most wrong-headed, containing phrases and sentiments which show the keenest insight into the needs of the moment, and the needs of eternity as well. The sentences are often very involved, it being quite evident that the speeches were not written out, not even deliberately thought out, in advance; for Oliver, even as he spoke, kept dropping and rejecting such of his half-finished utterances as did not give sufficiently accurate or vehement expression to his thought. Yet they contain abundance of the loftiest thought, expressed in language which merely gains strength from its rude, vigorous homeliness. For generations after Cromwell’s death, the polished cynics and dull pedants, who abhorred and misunderstood him, spoke of his utterances with mixed ridicule and wrath: Hume hazarding the opinion that if his speeches, letters, and writings, were gathered together they would form “one of the most nonsensical collections the world had ever seen.” We could far better afford to lose every line Hume ever wrote than the speeches of Cromwell. In his opening address he pointed out that what the nation most needed was healing and settling; and in a spirit of thoroughly English conservatism, denounced any merely revolutionary doctrines which would do away with the security of property, or would give the tenant “as liberal a fortune” as the landlord. In religious matters also, he condemned those who could do nothing but cry: “Overturn! Overturn!! Overturn!!!” and together with his praise of what had been done, and of the body to which he spoke, he mingled much advice, remarking: “I hope you will not be unwilling to hear a little again of the sharp as well as of the sweet.” He exhorted them to go to work in sober earnest; to remedy in practical shape any wrongs, and to join with him in working for good government. Unfortunately, he made the mental reservation that he should be himself the ultimate judge of what good government was.