Jenks's Portland Gazette

Sanctity of Usurpation.
The Speech of Oliver Cromwell, upon dissolving the long Parliament—[a la mode de BUONAPARTE.]

"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice. Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government: Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would, like Esau, sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas, betray your God, for a few pieces of money! Is there a single virtue now remaining among you? Is there one vice you do not possess?—Ye have no more religion than my horse! Gold is your God.—Which of you have not bartered away your consciences for bribes? Is there a man amongst you, that hath the least regard for the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes! have ye not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves? By your immoral principles and wicked practices, ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You, who were deputed here by the people to get their grievances redressed, are yourselves become their greatest grievance.

Your country therefore calls upon me to clean this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this house; and which, by God's help, and the strength he hath given me, I am now come to do. I command you, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this house. Go! Get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves, be gone!—So!—.Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors."