If we
consider merely the territorial area which it covered, or the numbers
of men slain in its battles, the war of the English parliament against
Charles I. seems a trivial affair when contrasted with the gigantic
but comparatively insignificant work of barbarians like Jinghis or
Tamerlane. But if we consider the moral and political issues involved,
and the influence of the struggle upon the future welfare of mankind,
we soon come to see that there never was a conflict of more world-wide
importance than that from which Oliver Cromwell came out victorious. It
shattered the monarchical power in England at a time when monarchical
power was bearing down all opposition in the other great countries of
Europe. It decided that government by the people and for the people
should not then perish from the earth. It placed free England in a
position of such moral advantage that within another century the
English Idea of political life was able to react most powerfully upon
continental Europe. It was the study of English institutions by such men
as Montesquieu and Turgot, Voltaire and Rousseau, that gave shape and
direction to the French Revolution. That violent but wholesome clearing
of the air, that tremendous political and moral awakening, which ushered
in the nineteenth century in Europe, had its sources in the spirit
which animated the preaching of Latimer, the song of Milton, the solemn
imagery of Bunyan, the political treatises of Locke and Sidney, the
political measures of Hampden and Pym.
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