Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/404

 our endeavours to the utmost that the trouble may fall upon the contrivers and authors of this breach, and not upon the poor innocent people, who have been led and compelled into this action, as many poor souls now prisoners to us confess.

We thought ourselves bound in duty thus to expostulate with you, and thus to profess; to the end we may bear our integrity out before the world, and may have comfort in God, whatever the event be.

Desiring your answer, I rest, your Lordships humble servant, OLIVER CROMWELL.

The troubles of Scotland are coming thick. The ‘Engagers,‘ those that ‘engaged’ with Hamilton, are to be condemned; then, before long, come ‘Resolutioners’ and ‘Protesters’; and in the wreck of the Hamilton-Argyle discussions, and general cunctations,—all men desiring to say Yes and No instead of Yes or No,—Royalism and Presbyterianism alike are disastrously sinking.

The Lordships here addressed as ‘Committee of Estates’ can make no answer, for they do not now exist as Committee of Estates;—Argyle and Company are now assuming that character the shifting of the dresses, which occasions some complexity in those old Letters, is just going on. From Argyle and Company, however, who see in Cromwell their one sure stay, there are already on the road conciliatory congratulatory messages, by Lairds and Majors, ‘from Falkirk,‘ where the Whiggamore Raid and Lanark are making their Armistice or Treaty. Whereupon follows, with suitably vague Superscription, for Argyle and Company: