CIVIL WARS
eloquence, he had little power of orderly and lucid statement. Once when he succeeded in attaining it he said, with a mixture of thankfulness and surprise, "Truly I think it hath pleased God to lead me to a true and clear stating our agreement and our difference[1]."
The difference between the standpoints of Lincoln and Cromwell as rulers comes out very clearly in the expressions they employ. Each regarded himself as the champion of the people. Each used precisely the same phrase about the nation he ruled: both style it "the best people in the world." "Incomparably the best people in the world," said Cromwell, forestalling future comparisons. Cromwell's assertion that his government ruled "for the good of the people, and for their interest, and without respect to any other interest," may be set side by side with Lincoln's statement that his aim was to preserve "the government of the people, for the people, by the people." It is in the last
- ↑ Clarke Papers, i. 134, 380.
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