mmmmsmm

Swartbmore Xecture.

In Oliver Cromwell a whole age was concen-trated into a personality of heroic mould. Hiswork, supremely personal and therefore irrational,marks the beginning of a new epoch. The entirementality of the Anglo-Saxon world would havebeen different had the Stuarts succeeded in im-posing uniformity on the dissenters of England and New England , and subjecting even such acentre as Boston to the Anglican Church.Remember the contemporary world where thepeace of Westfalia had just laid down as a funda-mental principle " cuius regio eius religio " (i.e.the possessor of the land prescribes the religion ofthe subjects). In comparison to that Cromwell really was the Protector of what in his age provedto be the germs of a new era. On an old print ofthe British Museum , we see him clad in coat of ironmail, standing upon the whore of Babylon andguarding the hill of the two kingdoms at his left,the hill of Sion at his right—so he stands in history.

The downfall of the Commonwealth meant areturn swing of the pendulum. The eighteenthcentury that followed was an age of religiouslethargy. Among the upper classes the crudestmaterialism prevailed, together with greed forcolonial loot, a frivolous craving for pleasure,corruption and speculation (South sea bubbles).The lower classes, still bound by tradition, couldnot withstand the assaults of early capitalism.The peasants were driven off the land. Destitu-tion and drunkenness spread to an alarming extent.In the second half of the eighteenth century wagesstood, according to Rogers, at a rate below the