Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/40

THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN three words that the difference lies. One can hardly say that Cromwell's aim included government by the people. "What's for their good, not what pleases them " was his motto. Lincoln held that in the long run the people was infallible, but there is no trace of that optimistic view in Cromwell's speeches.

Further, the two men used the word "people" in rather different senses: Lincoln used it with a larger and more inclusive meaning; Cromwell saw in the midst of the English people a smaller body, "a peculiar people," "the people of God," "a people that are to God as the apple of His eye." It was the cause of "the people of God" that he had always in his mind, not that of the people in general, though he held that the interests of the two were not incompatible. Lincoln, when he qualified the word "people," spoke of "the plain people" as his special care, and of himself as their representative. One man thought of a class which included all but the whole nation; the other of a 32