Читать книгу Oliver Cromwell онлайн

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In every nation there is, as there has been from time immemorial, a good deal of difficulty in combining the policies of upholding the national honor abroad, and of preserving a not too heavily taxed liberty at home. Many peoples and many rulers who have solved the problem with marked success as regards one of the two conditions, have failed as regards the other. It was the peculiar privilege of the Stuart kings to fail signally in both. They were dangerous to no one but their own subjects. Their government was an object of contempt to their neighbors and of contempt, mixed with anger and terror, to their own people. They made amends for utter weakness in the face of a foreign foe by showing against the free men of their own country that kind of tyranny which finds its favorite expression in oppressing those who resist not at all, or ineffectually. They were held on the throne only by a mistaken but honorable loyalty, and by an unworthy servility; by the strong habits formed by the customs of centuries; and, most of all, by the wise distrust of radical innovation and preference for reform to revolution which gives to the English race its greatest strength.