The merit or demerit of thus erecting a commonwealth on the ruins of the monarchy chiefly belongs to Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, and Marten, who by their superior influence guided and controlled the opinions and passions of their associates in the senate and the army. After the king's death they derived much valuable aid from the talents of Vane,[2] Whitelock, and St. John; and a feeble lustre was shed on their cause by the accession of the five peers [Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 8. Yet neither this declaration nor the frequent remonstrances of the lawyers could prevent the house from usurping the office of the judges, or from inflicting illegal punishments. Thus, for example, on the report of a committee, detailing the discovery of a conspiracy to extort money by a false charge of delinquency, the house, without hearing the accused, or sending them before a court of justice, proceeded to inflict on some the penalties of the pillory, fine, and imprisonment, and adjudged Mrs. Samford, as the principal, to be whipped the next day from Newgate to the Old Exchange, and to be kept to hard labour for three months.--Journals, 1650, Feb. 2, Aug. 13.] [Footnote 2: Immediately after Pride's purge, Vane, disgusted at the intolerance of his own party, left London, and retired to Raby Castle; he was now induced to rejoin them, and resumed his seat on Feb. 26.] from the abolished House of Lords. But, after all, what right could this handful of men have to impose a new constitution on the kingdom? Ought they not, in consistency with their own principles, to have ascertained the sense of the nation by calling a new parliament? The question was raised, but the leaders, aware that their power was based on the sword of the military, shrunk from the experiment; and, to elude the demands of their opponents, appointed a committee to regulate the succession of parliaments and the election of members; a committee, which repeatedly met and deliberated, but never brought the question to any definitive conclusion. Still, when the new authorities looked around the house, and observed the empty benches, they were admonished of their own insignificance, and of the hollowness of their pretensions. They claimed the sovereign authority, as the representatives of the people; but the majority of those representatives had been excluded by successive acts of military violence; and the house had been reduced from more than five hundred members, to less than one-seventh of that number. For the credit and security of the government it was necessary both to supply the deficiency, and, at the same time, to oppose a bar to the introduction of men of opposite principles. With this view, they resolved[a] to continue the exclusion of those who had on the 5th of December assented to the vote, that the king's "concessions were a sufficient ground to proceed to a settlement;" but to open the house to all others who should previously enter on the journals their dissent