A Cautionary Tale for Those who Love Liberty
ON THIS DAY IN 1653 OLIVER CROMWELL THREW OUT THE RUMP PARLIAMENT–A cautionary tale for those who love liberty
On this day, way back in 1653 Oliver Cromwell marched a small troop of English Puritan soldiers into the House of Commons and dissolved what has been historically called the Rump Parliament. In a phrase better known in England than here in America, he said, “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”
Now before your eyes turn glassy and you divert your attention to doing or reading something more important, I implore you, in the name of the same God, to read on. This is a story in the history of freedom. It is a cautionary tale for all who love liberty and for us in particular, we here in America, right now. In 1653 democracy was but a fledgling too weak to fly who nearly died in premature infancy.
This is a story you need to know.
Remember, that we in America, learned the art of democracy from the English. We refined it and, I believe, carried it further than the English, because we disdained the idea of monarchy and rejected the notion that sovereignty resided anywhere but in the people.
In America, we the people are sovereign.
In the 17th century, sovereignty resided in a king. His names was Charles I and he believed in the divine right of monarchs to rule over people, as almost all kings believed at that time. He asserted his power to make war and levy taxes and regulate by royal prerogative even though English tradition had long required kings to consult and receive approval from Parliament to do anything that required money. In 1642 Charles I, growing weary of asking mere subjects for approval to raise money and make war, exercised his kingly power and dissolved the legislative assembly and determined to rule England without a pesky parliament. Problem was, that now that taxes could not be raised by traditional legal means, Charles began coercing loans from his wealthy subjects and when that was not enough, he began to extort taxes without legal authority. And so the Parliament fought back. The House of Common raised an army and took to the field.
And there was a war. And Charles lost.
In January 1649, Charles was tried for treason against the English people and was taken to the scaffold before Whitehall and beheaded. It was the first successful revolution against a king in the modern history of Europe and England for a brief moment became a republic—a nation without a king. Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector over the Commonwealth of England.
It all sounds pretty good.
If you want to understand the precursors of our own American revolution, you need to read about these events—the English Civil War.
But things did not go according to plan. Once Charles was gone, the people were on their own. There was no precedence for such rule. Parliament was supreme and the elected men that sat in the House of Commons, (there were no women in elected government then), demonstrated that democracy doesn’t necessarily make men wiser or kings less attractive. Parliament dithered and argued and second guessed as to what to do and whether to invite a new king to rule over them. In effect England began to sink into disorder at the very moment of victory and its greatest freedom.
Oliver Cromwell had been the military genius who defeated Charles. He was a Puritan, a deeply religious man and I believe a good man. He was brilliant and had never lost a battle. He believed in religious toleration in an age when no such thing was conceivable. He invited the Jews to return to Britain. He wanted parliament to rule wisely and wanted Englishmen to be free of the oppression of kings.
And what Cromwell wanted was simply beyond the wisdom of the time. Parliament was more interested in its personal business than ruling wisely. And years passed, while England awaited a constitution that never came, and laws that were never passed and order than did not come.
And so, on this day, April 20th 1653, Cromwell, having the power of the New Model Army behind him, strode into Parliament and disbanded it. Threw the scoundrels out. And Britain, that had paved the way for democracy failed at the threshold and became a dictatorship of sorts, although to be fair, a rather benevolent and mild dictatorship. But England ceased to be a republic and eventually kings would be invited to rule again—one being George III.
I write this as a cautionary tale. We in America often presume that democracy is destined to be triumphant, that freedom is the natural condition of man, that human beings yearn everywhere and at all times for self-government and having attained it, hold to it dearly.
I am afraid this is not so.
We are witnesses, in the midst of national crisis, to a dithering Congress, predisposed to act only within narrow interests and limited imagination. We watch with astonishment grown adults, charged with governance, argue and posture and brow beat us with political correctness while there is decay in our cities, millions of homeless, dysfunction in our families and our schools, an opioid crisis, debt rising beyond payment, a declining military, economic challenges to our industrial base, millions flooding into our country without account, disdain for ours laws, and we watch a Rump Congress erode our faith in Democracy by angling for advantage and insulting one another. They discredit liberty, they undermine the institutions we fought a revolution, a civil war, and two world war to preserve.
There comes a point when we lose faith in the system.
Democracy can fail, my friends. It can fail at the very moment of maximal freedom. It can become absurd and irrelevant in distracted pettiness and self-importance.
Although it was wrong, I do not blame Oliver Cromwell for throwing the bums out.
I weep for a country that lost its moment of greatness and retreated into the absurdity and darkness of monarchy.
I weep for a Congress, an American Parliament, that presumes that representative government is so secure, so strong, that a time can never come, when a strong man, from somewhere, someplace, strides onto Capitol Hill in derision and scorn, and with the support of an appalled, disillusioned, angry America says, “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”
