Oliver Cromwell was regarded with admiration by the Puritans and independents of England; he is still their hero; but Richard Cromwell, his son, is my man.
The first is a fanatic who would be hissed to-day in the House of Commons, if he uttered there one single one of the unintelligible absurdities which he gave out with so much confidence before other fanatics who listened to him open-mouthed and wide-eyed, in the name of the Lord.If he said that one must seek the Lord, and fight the Lord's battles; if he introduced the Jewish jargon into the parliament of England, to the eternal shame of the human intelligence, he would be nearer to being led to Bedlam than to being chosen to command armies.
He was brave without a doubt; so are wolves; there are even monkeys as fierce as tigers.From being a fanatic he became an adroit politician, that is to say that from a wolf he became fox, climbed by imposture from the first steps where the infuriated enthusiasm of the times had placed him, right to the pinnacle of greatness; and the impostor walked on the heads of the prostrated fanatics.He reigned, but he lived in the horrors of anxiety.He knew neither serene days nor tranquil nights.The consolations of friendship and society never approached him; he died before his time, more worthy, without a doubt, of execution than the king whom he had conducted from a window of his own palace to the scaffold.
Richard Cromwell, on the contrary, born with a gentle, wise spirit, refused to keep his father's crown at the price of the blood of two or three rebels whom he could sacrifice to his ambition.He preferred to be reduced to private life rather than be an omnipotent assassin.He left the protectorate without regret to live as a citizen.Free and tranquil in the country, he enjoyed health there, and there did he possess his soul in peace for eighty-six years, loved by his neighbours, to whom he was arbiter and father.
Readers, give your verdict.If you had to choose between the destiny of the father and that of the son, which would you take?Philosophical Dictionary: Customs CUSTOMSCONTEMPTIBLE CUSTOMS DO NOT ALWAYS SUPPOSE A CONTEMPTIBLE NATIONTHERE are cases where one must not judge a nation by its customs and popular superstitions.I suppose that Caesar, having conquered Egypt, wanting to make trade flourish in the Roman Empire, has sent an embassy to China, by the port of Arsinoe, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean.The Emperor Yventi, first of his name, was then reigning; the annals of China represent him as a very wise and learned prince.After receiving Caesar's ambassadors with all the Chinese politeness, he informs himself secretly through his interpreters of the customs, science and religion of this Roman people, as celebrated in the West as the Chinese people is in the East.He learns first of all that this people's pontiffs have arranged their year in so absurd a fashion that the sun has already the heavenly signs of spring when the Romans are celebrating the first festivals of winter.
He learns that this nation supports at great cost a college of priests who know exactly the time when one should set sail and when one should give battle, by inspecting an ox's liver, or by the way in which the chickens eat barley.This sacred Science was brought formerly to the Romans by a little god named Tages, who emerged from the earth in Tuscany.These peoples worship one supreme God whom they always call the very great and very good God.Nevertheless, they have built a temple to a courtesan named Flora;and almost all the good women of Rome have in their homes little household gods four or five inches high.One of these little divinities is the goddess of the breasts; the other the goddess of the buttocks.There is a household god who is called the god Pet.The emperor Yventi starts laughing: the tribunals of Nankin think first of all with him that the Roman ambassadors are madmen or impostors who have taken the title of envoys of the Roman Republic; but as the emperor is as just as he is polite, he has private talks with the ambassadors.He learns that the Roman pontiffs have been very ignorant, but that Caesar is now reforming the calendar; they admit to him that the college of augurs was established in early barbarous times;that this ridiculous institution, become dear to a people long uncivilized, has been allowed to subsist; that all honest people laugh at the augurs;that Caesar has never consulted them; that according to a very great man named Cato, never has an augur been able to speak to his comrade without laughter; and that finally Cicero, the greatest orator and the best philosopher in Rome, has just written against the augurs a little work entitled "Of Divination," in which he commits to eternal ridicule all the soothsayers, all the predictions, and all the sorcery of which the world is infatuated.
The emperor of China is curious to read Cicero's book, the interpreters translate it; he admires the book and the Roman Republic.Philosophical Dictionary: Democracy DEMOCRACY ORDINARILY there is no comparison between the crimes of the great who are always ambitious, and the crimes of the people who always want, and can want only liberty and equality.These two sentiments, Liberty and Equality, do not lead direct to calumny, rapine, assassination, poisoning, the devastation of one's neighbours' lands, etc.; but ambitious might and the mania for power plunge into all these crimes whatever be the time, whatever be the place.
Popular government is in itself, therefore, less iniquitous, less abominable than despotic power.
The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty: there have been mountain-dwelling republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is not the republican spirit that made them so, it is nature.
