Though wreaths from adult hands he all unseized, Our crowns are crowns indeed if thrown by you.
Suffer me to dedicate this book to you. If you will give it your attention and absorb its lesson, I shall be well content, though every one else should mislike or condemn it. England has grudged you the knowledge of your hero. By slander and hatred and ignorance she has tried to make you suspect or forget Oliver Cromwell; and yet, as she needs you, you need him. Yes, England needs you. She addresses you with scornful lips and averts her eyes from you, but she needs you. She needed Cromwell and she treated him in the same way. In her great heart she knows - sometimes in moments of humility she owns - that to you and your fathers she owes almost all that is best in her, and that if you and your sons should disappear from her borders her day would decline. She feigns not to love you, but she needs you.
And you need Cromwell. He is the man of the hour for you. Your work for England and the world, if it is to be done, must be done precisely as he did his. The spirit in which he wrought has no precise parallel in history.
