The right of revolution

[Brenus]

“The English came up with the idea of executing a king under the guise of thinly justified legality before France,”
Jean Baptiste Mailhe, in his legal advice showed the antecedents and with few examples including Charles the 1st.
One interesting paragraph: "All the kings of Europe persuaded to the stupidity of their nations that they hold their crown of the sky. They have accustomed them to look them like images of the Divinity who orders to men; to believe that their person inviolable and is holly, and can be reached by no law."

Now his opinion about the English precedent:
“One reproaches the Parliament of England for having desecrated the forms; but, in this respect, one does not get along commonly, and it is essential to make our mind on this famous lawsuit. Charles Stuart was sacred like Louis XVI; he had betrayed the nation which had put him on a throne independent from all the bodies established by the English constitution, he could not be accused nor be judged per none of them; it could be done only by the nation.
When he (Charles) was arrested, the House of Lords was all in his favour, only wanted to save the king and the royal despotism. The House of Commons seized and exercised of all the parliamentary authority, and undoubtedly it had the right in the circumstances of doing it at the times.
But the Parliament itself was only a Chamber. It did not represent the nation in the plenitude of its sovereignty. It represented it only through and by the constitution. It could thus neither judge the king, nor to delegate the right to judge it.
It should have done what did France. It should have ask the English nation to form a Convention. If the House of Commons had taken this way, it would have been the last hour of the royalty in England.
Never this famous publicity agent, which would be the first of the men if it did not have prostitute his feather to the apology for monarchy and the nobility*, would not have had the pretext of say that “it was a rather beautiful spectacle to see the impotent efforts of the English to restore among them the republic, to see the astonished people seeking the democracy and finding it nowhere; to see it finally, afterwards many movements, of the shocks and the jolts, forced to even rest in the government as it had proscribed”.
Unfortunately the House of Commons was directed by the genius of Cromwell, who, wanting to become king under the name of Protector, would have found in a national Convention the tomb for his ambition.
It is thus not the non-compliance with the procedures prescribed in England for the criminal judgements, but it is the defect of a national capacity/power, it is the protectorate of Cromwell, which threw on the lawsuit of Charles Stuart this odious that can be found recall in the most philosophical writings. Charles Stuart deserved death; but its torment could be ordered only by the nation or a court chosen by it.”

* I have no idea to whom he refers to…

Translation a bit er, difficult due to old way to write French...

[Rhyfelwyr]

Unfortunately the House of Commons was directed by the genius of Cromwell, who, wanting to become king under the name of Protector, would have found in a national Convention the tomb for his ambition. [/I]”

Well that part is completely wrong. Cromwell did not want to become King or have any similar position, otherwise why would he have gave the power he did to the Rump Parliament? Or model the later Barebones Parliament on the Sanhedrin?

Also, had any such "ambition" existed to become Lord Protector, it would have been the nation that gave him it and not just the Parliament. Indeed, Cromwell and the Independents were by far the majority with the common people and the army, while the Political Presbyterians held power within Parliament.

Cromwell became a "tyrant" or "military dictator" because Parliament kept betraying the Commonwelath. For example it was Cromwell who objected to the Navigation Act which caused the Anglo-Dutch War of 1642 beacuse fighting against another Calvinist nation was clearly betraying a Parliament which was supposed to represent a 'Godly Republic', and was even formed with just 70 members to represent the Sanhedrin because they thought it was the end times!

Parliament betrayed the Commonwealth ideals, the New Model Army became the means through which Cromwell could restore them. Cromwell was not opposed to the idea of parliaments, but several particular Parliaments had acted against the Constitution.

[Brenus]

“Well that part is completely wrong.” Perhaps. It is how a 17th Century French lawyer analysed it.
This text is part of a study why the French Assembly could put Louis the XVI on trial according to the law.
The problem was by the first Constitution, the King was exempt of all prosecutions.
So, Mailhe goes in a same kind of context to see why the French can do it, and what has to be avoided.
In his view, the fact that the British Parliament wasn’t elected by the English people, that there is no British Constitution was the flaw and the reasons why they went back to the Monarchy.
He thinks that Cromwell ambition was one of the reason as well for not having a Constitution fixing the frame of Powers.

Well, it is how I analyse his text.

He is in fact afraid of what will happen: Napoleon