Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/346

312

Scotch Army of Forty-thousand, ‘to deliver the King from Sectaries’, is not a fable but a fact. Scotland is distracted by dim disastrous factions, very uncertain what it will do with the King when he is delivered; but in the meanwhile Hamilton has got a majority in the Scotch Parliament; and drums are beating in that country: the ‘ Army of Forty-thousand, certainly coming,’ hangs over England like a flaming comet, England itself being all very combustible too. In few weeks hence, discontented Wales, the Presbyterian Colonels declaring now for Royalism, will be in a blaze; large sections of England, all England very ready to follow, will shortly after be in a blaze.

The small Governing Party in England, during those early months of 1648, are in a position which might fill the bravest mind with misgivings. Elements of destruction everywhere under and around them; their lot either to conquer, or ignominiously to die. A King not to be bargained with; kept in Carisbrook, the centre of all factious hopes, of world-wide intrigues: that is one element. A great Royalist Party, subdued with difficulty, and ready at all moments to rise again: that is another. A great Presbyterian Party, at the head of which is London City, ‘the Purse-bearer of the Cause,’ highly dissatisfied at the course things had taken, and looking desperately round for new combinations and a new struggle: reckon that for a third element. Add lastly a headlong Mutineer, Republican, or Levelling Party: and consider that there is a working House of Commons which counts about Seventy, divided in pretty equal halves too,—the rest waiting what will come of it. Come of it, and of the Scotch Army advancing towards it!—

Cromwell, it appears, deeply sensible of all this, does in these weeks make strenuous repeated attempts towards at least a union among the friends of the Cause themselves, whose aim