The central idea of the pamphlet, and practically its backbone, is One and the same Parliament in Perpetuity or Membership for Life. This may be a surprise, not only to those who, knowing that Milton was a Republican, conceive him therefore to have held necessarily the exact modern theory of Representative Government, but also to those who understand Milton better, and who may remember at this point his somewhat contemptuous estimates on previous occasions of the value of the bodies called Parliaments. If those previous passages of his writings are studied, however, it will be found that he is not now so inconsistent as he looks. He had always thought a broad general council of fit men in the centre of a nation the essential of good government; and his chief recommendation to Cromwell, even when approving of his exceptional Sovereignty, had been that he should keep round him such a general Council. Further, it will be found that permanence of the same men at the centre of affairs had always been his implied ideal, whether permanence of an exceptional Single-Person sovereignty surrounded by a Council, or permanence of a Council without a Single-Person sovereignty. His real objection to so-called Parliaments, it will be found, lay in the association with them of the ideas of shiftingness, interruptedness, successiveness, the turmoil and debauchery of successive general elections. So possessed was he with the notion of permanence of tenure as desirable in the governing agency, whatever it might be, that he had even modified the notion, as we have seen, to suit the anomalous conditions of that stage of the Anarchy which we have called the Wallingford-House Interruption, He had recommended then the experiment of a duality of life-aristocracies, one civil and the other military. And now, the turn of circumstances and of his speculations shutting him up once more to a single Civil Parliament of the ordinary size and kind, he will insist on the quality of permanence or perpetuity as that which alone will make it answer the purpose. But, the very name "Parliament" having been vitiated so as to make a permanent Parliament a difficult conception for most people, he would rather get rid of the name altogether, and call the central governing body simply THE GENERAL OR GRAND COUNCIL OF THE NATION.
All this appears in Milton's own words, as follows:—
"The ground and basis of every just and free Government (since men have smarted so oft for committing all to one person) is a GENERAL COUNCIL OF ABLEST MEN, chosen by the people to consult of public affairs from time to time for the common good. This Grand Council must have the forces by sea and land in their power, must raise and manage the public revenue, make laws as need requires, treat of commerce, peace, or war, with foreign nations; and, for the carrying on some particular affairs of State with more secrecy and expedition, must elect, as they have already, out of their own number and others, a Council of State, And, although it may seem strange at first hearing, by reason that men's minds are prepossessed with the conceit of successive Parliaments, I affirm that the GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL, being well chosen, should sit perpetual: for so their business is, and they will become thereby skilfullest, best acquainted with the people, 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, unless they be faulty, cannot be safe for the building. I see not therefore how we can be advantaged by successive Parliaments, but that they are much likelier continually to unsettle rather than to settle a free Government, to breed commotions, changes, novelties, and uncertainties, and serve only to satisfy the ambition of such men as think themselves injured and cannot stay till they be orderly chosen to have their part in the Government. If the ambition of such be at all to be regarded, the best expedient will be, and with least danger, that every two or three years a hundred or some such number may go out by lot or suffrage of the rest, and the like number be chosen in their places (which hath been already thought on here, and done in other Commonwealths); but in my opinion better nothing moved, unless by death or just accusation.... [Farther argument for the permanence of the Supreme Governing Body, with illustrations from the Sanhedrim of the Jews, the Areopagus of Athens, the Senates of Lacedaemon and Home, the full Venetian Senate, and the States-General of the United Provinces]. I know not therefore what should be peculiar in England to make successive Parliaments thought safest, or convenient here more than in all other nations, unless it be the fickleness which is attributed to us as we are Islanders. But good education and acquisite wisdom ought to correct the fluxible fault, if any such be, of our watery situation. I suppose therefore that the people, well weighing these things, would have no cause to fear or murmur, though the Parliament, abolishing that name, as originally signifying but the parley of our Commons with their Norman King when he pleased to call them, should perpetuate themselves, if their ends be faithful and for a free Commonwealth, under the name of a GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL: nay, till this be done, I am in doubt whether our State will be ever certainly and thoroughly settled.... The GRAND COUNCIL being thus firmly constituted to perpetuity, and still upon the death or default of any member supplied and kept in full number, there can be no cause alleged why peace, justice, plentiful trade, and all prosperity, should not thereupon ensue throughout the whole land, with as much assurance as can be of human things that they shall so continue (if God favour us and our wilful sins provoke Him not) even, to the coming of our true and rightful and only to be expected King, only worthy as He is our only Saviour, the Messiah, the Christ, the only heir of his Eternal Father, the only by Him anointed and ordained, since the work of our redemption finished, Universal Lord of all mankind. The way propounded is plain, easy, and open before us, without intricacies, without the mixture of inconveniences, or any considerable objection to be made, as by some frivolously, that it is not practicable. And this facility we shall have above our next neighbouring Commonwealth (if we can keep us from the fond conceit of something like a Duke of Venice, put lately into many men's heads by some one or other subtly driving on, under that pretty notion, his own ambitious ends to a crown),1 that our liberty shall not be hampered or hovered over by any engagement to such a potent family as the House of Nassau, of whom to stand in perpetual doubt and suspicion, but we shall live the clearest and absolutest free nation, in the world."
1: The allusion here is vague.
In effect, therefore, Milton's Ready and Easy Way, recommended to the mixed Parliament of Residuary Rumpers and their reseated Presbyterian half-brothers of March 1659-60, is that this Parliament, nailing the Republican flag to the mast, should make itself, or some enlargement of itself, the perpetual supreme power under the name of THE GRAND COUNCIL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, appointing a smaller Council of State, as heretofore, to be the working executive, but plainly intimating to the people that there are to be no more general Parliamentary elections, but only elections to vacancies as they may occur in the Grand Council by death or misdemeanour. He is himself against the adoption of Harrington's principle of rotation to any extent whatever; but, if it would reconcile people to his scheme, he would concede rotation so far as to let a portion of the Grand Council go out every second or third year to admit new men.
While expounding his main idea, Milton had intimated that he had another suggestion in reserve, which might help to reconcile reasonable men of democratic prepossessions to the seeming novelty of an irremovable apparatus of Government at the centre. This suggestion he brings forward near the end of the pamphlet. He arrives at it in the course of a demonstration in farther detail of certain superiorities of Commonwealth government over Regal. "The whole freedom of man," he says, "consists either in Spiritual or Civil Liberty." Glancing first at Spiritual Liberty, he contents himself with a general statement of the principle of Liberty of Conscience, as implying the absolute and unimpeded right of every individual Christian to interpret the Scripture for himself and give utterance and effect to his conclusions; and, though he does not conceal that in his own opinion such Liberty of Conscience cannot be complete without Church-disestablishment, he does not press that for the present. Enough that Liberty of Conscience, according to any endurable definition of it, is more safe in a Republic than in a Kingdom,—which, by various instances from history, he maintains to be a fact. Then, coming to Civil Liberty, he propounds his reserved suggestion, or the second real novelty of his pamphlet, thus:—
"The other part of our freedom consists in the civil rights and advancements of every person according to his merit: the enjoyment of those never more certain, and the access to these never more open, than in a free Commonwealth. And both in my opinion may be best and soonest obtained if every county in the land were made a Little Commonwealth, and their chief town a City if it be not so called already; where the nobility and chief gentry may build houses or palaces befitting their quality, may bear part in the [district or city] government, make their own judicial laws, and execute them by their own elected judicatures, without appeal, in all things of Civil Government between man and man. So they shall have justice in their own hands, and none to blame but themselves if it be not well administered. In these employments they may exercise and fit themselves till their lot fall to be chosen into THE GRAND COUNCIL, according as their worth and merit shall be taken notice of by the people. As for controversies that may happen between men of several counties, they may repair, as they now do, to the Capital City. They should have here also [i.e. in their own Cities and Counties] schools and academies at their own choice, wherein their children may be bred up in their own sight to all learning and noble education, not in grammar only, but in all liberal arts and exercises."
This is what would now be called a scheme of Decentralization or Systematic Local Government. The counties, with their chief cities, should be so many little independent communities, each with its legislative council, its law-courts, and its other institutions, employing and tasking the political energies and abilities of the citizens or inhabitants of the district. While this would be advantageous in itself, inasmuch as it would stimulate mental activity and social improvement everywhere, and would relieve the GRAND CENTRAL COUNCIL of much work more properly appertaining to municipalities, it would doubtless reconcile many to the existence of such a GRAND CENTRAL COUNCIL in perpetuity. Energetic and ambitious spirits would have scope and training in their own cities and neighbourhoods, and the hope of being elected to the Central Government when there should be a vacancy there would be a fine incitement to the best to qualify themselves to the utmost for national statesmanship.
The following is the closing passage of the whole pamphlet:—
"With all hazard I have ventured what I thought my duty, to speak in season and to forewarn my country in time; wherein I doubt not but there be many wise men in all places and degrees, but am sorry the effects of wisdom are so little seen among us. Many circumstances and particulars I could have added in those things whereof I have spoken; but a few main matters now put speedily into execution will suffice to recover us and set all right. And there will want at no time who are good at circumstances; but men who set their minds on main matters and sufficiently urge them in these most difficult times I find not many. What I have spoken is the language of the Good Old Cause: if it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders. Thus much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but, with the Prophet, O Earth, Earth, Earth, to tell the very soil itself what God hath determined of Coniah and his seed for ever. But I trust I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and ingenuous men,—to some perhaps whom God may raise of these stones to become Children of Liberty, and may enable and unite in their noble resolutions to give a stay to these our ruinous proceedings and to this general defection of the misguided and abused multitude."