make all general laws, peace or war, but not without assent of the standing council in each city, or such other general assembly as may be called on such occasion, from the whole territory, where they may, without much trouble, deliberate on all things fully, and send up their suffrages within a set time, by deputies appointed.

3. Though this grand council be perpetual, (as in that book I proved would be best and most conformable to best examples,) yet they will then, thus limited, have so little matter in their hands, or power to endanger our liberty; and the people so much in theirs, to prevent them, having all judicial laws in their own choice, and free votes in all those which concern generally the whole commonwealth; that we shall have little cause to fear the perpetuity of our general senate; which will be then nothing else but a firm foundation and custody of our public liberty, peace, and union, through the whole commonwealth, and the transactors of our affairs with foreign nations. If this yet be not thought enough, the known expedient may at length be used, of a partial rotation.

4. Lastly, If these gentlemen convocated refuse these fair and noble offers of immediate liberty, and happy condition, no doubt there be enough in every county who will thankfully accept them; your excellency once more declaring publicly this to be your mind, and having a faithful veteran army, so ready and glad to assist you in the prosecution thereof. For the full and absolute administration of law in every county, which is the

difficultest of these proposals, hath been of most long desired; and the not granting it held a general grievance. The rest, when they shall see the beginnings and proceedings of these constitutions proposed, and the orderly, the decent, the civil, the safe, the noble effects thereof, will be soon convinced, and by degrees come in of their own accord, to be partakers of so happy a govern

ment.

MODE OF ESTABLISHING

FREE COMMONWEALTH. (')

[FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1660.]

Et nos

Consilium dedimus Syllæ, demus populo nunc.

1. ALTHOUGH, since the writing of this treatise, the face of things hath had some change, writs for new elections have been recalled, and the members at first chosen re-admitted from exclusion; yet not a little rejoicing to hear declared

(1) The title under which this short work has been hitherto printed is, "The ready and easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Excellence thereof, compared with the Inconveniencies and Dangers of re-admitting Kingship in this Nation." For the advocates of absolute monarchy he entertained a sovereign contempt, traces of which are everywhere visible in his works; but especially in the Eikonoklastes, where, animadverting on the desire of the more ignorant and baseminded among the people to recal the exiled Stuart, he says: "But the people, exorbitant and excessive in all their motions, are prone ofttimes not to a religious only, but to a civil kind of idolatry, in idolizing their kings; though never more mistaken in the object of their worship: heretofore being wont to

the resolution of those who are in power, tending to the establishment of a free commonwealth, and to remove, if it be possible, this noxious humour of returning to bondage, instilled of late by some deceivers, and nourished from bad principles and false apprehensions among too many of the people; I thought best not to suppress what I had written,(*) hoping that it may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely published, in the midst of our elections to a free parliament, or their sitting to consider freely of the government; whom it behoves to have all things represented to them that may direct their judgment therein; and I

repute for saints those faithful and courageous barons, who lost their lives in the field, making glorious war against tyrants for the common liberty; as Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, against Henry III.; Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, against Edward II. But now, with a besotted and degenerate baseness of spirit, except some few who yet retain in them the old English fortitude and love of freedom, and have testified it by their matchless deeds, imbastardized from the ancient nobleness of their ancestors, are ready to fall flat and give adoration to the image and memory of this man, who hath offered at more cunning fetches to undermine our liberties, and put tyranny into an art, than any British king before him."

(2) Upon this attempt of Milton at composing the distractions of his country, Dr. Johnson remarks: "Even in the year of the restoration he bated no jot of heart or hope, but was fantastical enough to think that the nation, agitated as it was, might be settled by a pamphlet." Milton was not without hope that reason and common sense, though urged in a pamphlet, might have some weight with his countrymen, whom he saw still hesitating to put their necks in the yoke; and at all events, considered it his duty to lift up a warning voice, cautioning them before it should be too late. In the next page Johnson speaks of him as "kicking when he could strike no longer;"

never read of any state, scarce of any tyrant, grown so incurable, as to refuse counsel from any in a time of public deliberation, much less to be offended. If their absolute determination be to enthral us, before so long a Lent of servitude, they may permit us a little shroving-time first, wherein to speak freely, and take our leaves of liberty. (3) And because in the former edition, through haste, many faults escaped, and many books were suddenly dispersed, ere the note to mend them could be sent, I took the opportunity from this occasion to revise and somewhat to enlarge the whole discourse, especially that part which argues for a perpetual senate. The treatise thus revised and enlarged, is as follows:

2. The Parliament of England, assisted by a great number of the people who appeared and stuck to them faithfullest in defence of religion and their civil liberties, judging kingship by long experience a government unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous, justly and magnanimously abolished it, turning regal bondage into a free commonwealth, to the admiration and terror of our emulous neighbours. They took themselves not

and again, further on, describes him "skulking from the approach of his king;" forgetting that that same king had for years been skulking from the parliament, and subsisting on the contemptuous pity of a foreign despot, to whom, when reinstated in his kingdom, he was content, if history may be believed, to become the pensioned slave.

(3) A melancholy leave-taking; for,

"Jove fixed it certain that the fatal day

That makes man slave, takes half his worth away."