Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/74

Cromwell in Ireland to the Jews for a Synagogue. He sold hundreds of English and Scotch gentlefolk and many thousands of Irish men, women, and children as slaves to the West Indian planters. No illegality was too great for him. It is doubtful whether all the illegal actions charged against Charles could match that single act of Cromwell's by which he arrested and locked up the three counsel for a London merchant, who was being prosecuted for having refused to pay taxes which had not been voted by Parliament. He set the Parliament against the King. He set the army against the Parliament. He split the army into two sections. He humbugged Parliament and army at the same moment, pretending to the Parliament that the army designed to assassinate him, and to the army that the Parliament would never leave their seats until the soldiers "would pull them out by the ears." When confronted with this perfidy he fell upon his knees in the House of Commons, and took a solemn oath that it was untrue. He was false to his own chosen band of conspirators, and to the inner circle of his friends, and to each one of these multitudinous parties, which he deceived in turn, he used the same solemn affirmations of probity and rectitude, piling protestation upon protestation in a 62