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office with all her faculties to receive him: easy confession, easy absolution, pardons, indulgences, masses for him both quick and dead, Agnus Deis, and the like. And he, instead of "working out his salvation with fear and trembling," straight thinks in his heart-like another kind of fool than he in the Psalms-to bribe God as a corrupt judge, and by his proctor, some priest or friar, to buy out his peace with money, which he cannot with his repentance.

ON GOVERNMENT.

IN politics, Milton was a sincere republican, but his ideal of a republic was far more of an aristocratic than a democratic form.* To monarchy in itself he had no violent objection, and had he seen it as it has appeared in this country since the Revolution, he would probably have acquiesced in it with cheerfulness. But when he looked back on the courts and governments of the two first Stuarts, and turned his view on the actual court of France, he could anticipate nothing but evil from a return to that form of government, and he could discern in Europe no better model than that of the United Provinces, which, with modifications, he recommended to the people of England, in his treatise on "The ready and easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, and the

* Milton, we may be sure, would ascribe to our Lord no sentiments but what he regarded as true and just. He makes him express himself as follows in Paradise Regained :

"And what the people but a herd confused,

A miscellaneous rabble, who extol

Things vulgar and, well weigh'd, scarce worth the praise ?

They praise and they admire they know not what,

And know not whom, but as one leads the other.

And what delight to be by such extoll'd,

To live upon their tongues and be their talk!
Of whom to be dispraised is no small praise,-
His lot who dare be singularly good."-iii. 49.

excellence thereof," which he published on the eve of the Restoration.

In this treatise he sums up, and not without somewhat of the spirit of a prophet, the ill results of a return to the ancient line of princes. Having noticed Christ's rebuke of the ambition of the sons of Zebedee, and asserting that it was of civil government only that he spoke, he proceeds as follows:

And what government comes nearer to this precept of Christ than a free commonwealth? wherein they who are the greatest are perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their own cost and charges; neglect their own affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren; live soberly in their families, walk the streets as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly, without adoration. Whereas a king must be adored like a demigod, with a dissolute and haughty court about him, of vast expense and luxury; masks and revels, to the debauching of our prime gentry, both male and female, not in their pastimes only, but in earnest, by the loose employments of court-service, which will be then thought honourable. There will be a queen of no less charge-in most likelihood outlandish and a Papist-besides a queen-mother already, together with both their courts and numerous train: then a royal issue, and erelong severally their sumptuous courts; to the multiplying of a servile crew, not of servants only, but of nobility and gentry, bred up then to the hopes, not of public but of court-offices, to be stewards, chamberlains, ushers, grooms even of the close-stool: and the lower their minds, debased with court-opinions contrary to all virtue and reformation, the haughtier will be their pride and profuseness. We may well remember this not long since at home, nor need but look at present into the French court, where enticements and preferments daily draw away and pervert the Protestant nobility.

As to the burden of expense, to our cost we shall soon know it, for any good to us deserving to be termed no better than the vast and lavish price of our subjection and their debauchery, which we are now so greedily cheapening, and would so fain be paying most inconsiderately to a single person, who, for anything wherein the public really needs him, will have little else to do but

*

to bestow the eating and drinking of excessive dainties, to set a pompous lace upon the superficial actings of state, to pageant himself up and down in progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings of an abject people, on either side deifying and adoring him for nothing done that can deserve it.

Instead of placing power thus in the hands of a single person, for which, he says-not perhaps without an eye to Cromwell-men have smarted so oft, Milton would have it deposited in those of "a general council of ablest men, chosen by the people, to consult of public affairs from time to time for the common good."

In this grand council must the sovereignty, not transferred, but delegated only, and, as it were, deposited, reside; with this caution, they must have the forces by sea and land committed to them, for preservation of the common peace and liberty; must raise and manage the public revenue, at least with some inspectors, deputed for satisfaction of the people how it is em ployed; must make or propose civil laws, treat of commerce, peace, or war, with foreign nations, and-for the carrying on some particular affairs with more secresy and expedition-must elect (as they have already†), out of their own number and others, a council of state.

It seems rather extraordinary that, after the experience of the Long Parliament, Milton should propose this council to be perpetual. But he proceeds

thus:

And although it may seem strange at first hearing-by reason that men's minds are prepossessed with the notion of successive parliaments-I affirm that the grand or general council, being

*These royal progresses, or rounds of visits to the houses of the nobility, had prevailed chiefly in the reign of Elizabeth.

Sc. elected. This omission of the participle was not unusual with our old writers, and, in our opinion, it is not to be disapproved of. "But I have, and do reverence him, for the greatness that was only proper to himself," says Ben Jonson of Bacon.

"More than my own; that am, have, and will be."-Hen. VIII. iii. 2.

well chosen, should be perpetual; for so their business is or may be and ofttimes urgent, the opportunity of affairs gained or lost in a moment. The day of council cannot be set, as the day of a festival, but must be ready always to prevent* or answer all occasions. By this continuance they will become every way skilfullest, best provided of intelligence from abroad, best acquainted with the people at home and the people with them. The ship of the commonwealth is always under sail; they sit at the stern, and if they steer well, what need is there to change them, it being rather dangerous? Add to this, that the grand council is both. foundation and main pillar of the whole State; and to move pillars and foundations, not faulty, cannot be safe for the building.

I see not, therefore, how we can be advantaged by successive and transitory parliaments; but that they are much likelier continually to unsettle rather than to settle a free government, to breed commotions, changes, novelties, and uncertainties; to bring neglect upon present affairs and opportunities, while all minds are in suspense with expectation of a new assembly, and the assembly, for a good space, taken up with the new settling of itself. After which, if they find no great work to do, they will make it, by altering or repealing former acts, or making and multiplying new, that they may seem to see what their predecessors saw not, and not to have assembled for nothing, till all law be lost in the multitude of clashing statutes. But if the ambition of such as think themselves injured that they also partake not of the government, and are impatient till they be chosen, cannot brook the perpetuity of others chosen before them, or if it be feared that long continuance of power may corrupt sincerest men, the known expedient is, and by some lately propounded, that annually—or if the space be longer, so much perhaps the better the third part of senators may go out according to the precedence of their election, and the like number be chosen in their places, to prevent their settling of too absolute a power, if it should be perpetual; and this they call partial rotation.

His chief objection to this plan is, that in this way the best and ablest men might have to retire, and be replaced by those who were raw and inexperienced, or

I. e. Anticipate, a usual sense of prevent at that time.

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