Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/442

408 For, at London, matters are coming rapidly to a crisis. The resumed Debate, ‘Shall the Army Remonstrance be taken into consideration?’ does not come out affirmative; on the contrary, on Thursday the 30th, it comes out negative by a Majority of Ninety: ‘No, we will not take it into consideration.’ ‘No?’ The Army at Windsor, thereupon, spends again ‘a Day in Prayer.’ The Army at Windsor has decided on the morrow that it will march to London;—marches, arrives accordingly, on Saturday December 2d; quarters itself in Whitehall, in St. James’s; ‘and other great vacant Houses in the skirts of the City and Villages about, no offence being given anywhere.’ In the drama of Modern History one knows not any graver, more noteworthy scene;—earnest as very Death and Judgment. They have decided to have Justice, these men; to see God’s Justice done, and His judgments executed on this Earth. The abysses where the thunders and the splendours are bred,—the reader sees them again laid bare; and black Madness lying close to the Wisdom which is brightest and highest:—and owls and godless men who hate the lightning and the light, and love the mephitic dusk and darkness, are no judges of the actions of heroes! ’Shedders of blood?’ Yes, blood is occasionally shed. The healing Surgeon, the sacrificial Priest, the august Judge pronouncer of God’s oracles to men, these and the atrocious Murderer, are alike shedders of blood; and it is an owl’s eye that, except for the dresses they wear, discerns no difference in these!—Let us leave the owl to his hootings; let us get on with our Chronology and swift course of events.

On Monday 4th December, the House, for the last time, takes ‘into farther debate’ the desperate question, Whether his Majesty’s concessions in that Treaty of Newport are a ground of settlement?—debates it all Monday; has debated it all Friday and Saturday before. Debates it all Monday ‘till five o’clock next morning; at five o’clock next morning, decides it, Yea. By a Majority of Forty-six,—One-hundred and twenty-