The
protector then rose, took off his hat, and addressed them in a speech which
lasted three hours. It was, after his usual style, verbose, involved, and
obscure, sprinkled with quotations from Scripture to refresh the piety
of the saints, and seasoned with an affectation of modesty to disarm the
enmity of the republicans. He described the state of the nation at the
close of the last parliament. It was agitated by the principles of the
Levellers, tending to reduce all to an equality; by the doctrines of the
Fifth-monarchy men, subversive of civil government; by religious theorists,
the pretended champions of liberty of conscience, who condemned an
established ministry as Babylonish and antichristian;
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Sept. 4.]
and by swarms of Jesuits, who had settled in England an episcopal
jurisdiction to pervert the people. At the same time the naval war with
Holland absorbed all the pecuniary resources, while a commercial war with
France and Portugal cramped the industry of the nation. He then bade them
contrast this picture with the existing state of things. The taxes had been
reduced; judges of talent and integrity had been placed upon the bench; the
burthen of the commissioners of the great seal had been lightened by the
removal of many descriptions of causes from the court of Chancery to the
ordinary courts of law; and "a stop had been put to that heady way for
every man, who pleased, to become a preacher.
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