Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/48

THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN necessary to carry out the work of reconstruction was ready to their hands.

In England on the contrary the constitution had practically perished in the struggle. All that survived was a part of it, and that a fragmentary part. The cases would have been parallel if the Americans had emerged from the contest without a President or a Senate, and with about a quarter of the Legislature installed as a provisional government and exercising absolute power. But the position of England between 1651 and 1660 was not like that of the Americans in 1865. It was more like that of the Americans between 1783 and 1788. The English had shaken off the yoke of their old government, but had not succeeded in creating a new one, and were in danger of drifting into anarchy just as the Americans were before the adoption of the constitution. Cromwell and the Puritans had the task of making a new constitution and could not succeed in achieving it. 40