Not only the supreme magistrate owed his authority to illegal force and usurpation; he had parcelled out the people into so many subdivisions of slavery, and had delegated to his inferior ministers the same unlimited authority which he himself had so violently assumed.
A government totally military and despotic, is almost sure, after some time, to fall into impotence and languor: but when it immediately succeeds a legal constitution, it may, at first, to foreign nations appear very vigorous and active, and may exert with more unanimity that power, spirit, and riches, which had been acquired under a better form.
It seems now proper, after so long an interval, to look abroad to the general state of Europe, and to consider the measures which England at this time embraced in its negotiations with the neighboring princes.
The moderate temper and unwarlike genius of the two last princes, the extreme difficulties under which they labored at home, and the great security which they enjoyed from foreign enemies, had rendered them negligent of the transactions on the continent; and England, during their reigns, had been, in a manner, overlooked in the general system of Europe.

The bold and restless genius of the protector led him to extend his alliances and enterprises to every part of Christendom; and partly from the ascendant of his magnanimous spirit, partly from the situation of foreign kingdoms, the weight of England, even under its most legal and bravest princes, was never more sensibly felt than during this unjust and violent usurpation.
A war of thirty years, the most signal and most destructive that had appeared in modern annals, was at last finished in Germany,[*] and by the treaty of Westphalia, were composed those fatal quarrels which had been excited by the palatine's precipitate acceptance of the crown of Bohemia.

The young palatine was restored to part of his dignities and of his dominions.[**] The rights, privileges, and authority of the several members of the Germanic body were fixed and ascertained: sovereign princes and free states were in some degree reduced to obedience under laws: and by the valor of the heroic Gustavus, the enterprises of the active Richelieu, the intrigues of the artful Mazarine, was in part effected, after an infinite expense of blood and treasure, which had been fondly expected and loudly demanded from the feeble efforts of the pacific James, seconded by the scanty supplies of his jealous parliaments.
* In 1648.
** This prince, during the civil wars, had much neglected his uncle, and paid court to the parliament; he accepted of a pension of eight thousand pounds a year from them, and took a place in their assembly of divines.
Sweden, which had acquired by conquest large dominions in the north of Germany, was engaged in enterprises which promised her, from her success and valor, still more extensive acquisitions on the side both of Poland and of Denmark.

Charles X., who had mounted the throne of that kingdom after the voluntary resignation of Christina, being stimulated by the fame of Gustavus, as well as by his own martial disposition, carried his conquering arms to the south of the Baltic, and gained the celebrated battle of Warsaw, which had been obstinately disputed during the space of three days.

The protector, at the time his alliance was courted by every power in Europe, anxiously courted the alliance of Sweden; and he was fond of forming a confederacy with a Protestant power of such renown, even though it threatened the whole north with conquest and subjection.
The transactions of the parliament and protector with France had been various and complicated.