[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 25993]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        CROMWELLIAN ADJOURNMENT

  (Mr. OBEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I had originally intended to take about 15 
minutes to recite my objections to our leaving with all of the 
unfinished business, but I have been persuaded by those with greater 
wisdom to simply remind the House of something the gentleman from 
Massachusetts said yesterday. He showed us the statement of Oliver 
Cromwell upon dismissing Parliament in 1653, which reads as follows: 
``Ye who are grown intolerably odious to the whole Nation; you who are 
deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves 
become the greatest grievance. Your country, therefore, calls upon me 
to cleanse 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 has given me, I am now come to do; I command ye therefore, 
upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place; 
go, get out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that 
shining bauble there, and lock the doors. In the name of God, go!''

                              {time}  1130

  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, the 
gentleman is a student of Oliver Cromwell, and I enjoy reading 
Cromwell's very famous statements as well.
  I would like to respond to the gentleman's Cromwell quote by reading 
another one. These were Oliver's dying words.
  He said, ``It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is 
to make what haste I can to be gone.'' So goodbye, God bless you, see 
you in two weeks.

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