Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/22

THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN necessity was the ground on which Lincoln justified emancipation, just as in England military necessity was the first and the most effective plea for toleration. "Honest men," wrote Cromwell to Parliament after Naseby, "served you faithfully in this action &hellip; I beseech you not to discourage them. He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for." But Cromwell when he attained power could never succeed in reconciling the movement for religious liberty and the movement for political liberty. He always declared that the liberty of the people of God and the liberty of the nation were perfectly compatible, and that it was "a pitiful fancy" to think they were inconsistent with each other. The army demanded one and the Parliament the other, and the impossibility of reconciling their demands produced the constitutional struggles of the Protectorate and the anarchy which led up to the Restoration. So while the battles fought in the American Civil 14