"What Liberty of Conscience can we then expect of others [even the good and great Queen Elizabeth, he has just said, had thought persecution necessary to preserve royal authority], far worse principled from, the cradle, trained up and governed by Popish and Spanish counsels, and on such depending hitherto for subsistence? Especially, what can this last Parliament expect, who, having revived lately and published the Covenant, hare re-engaged themselves never to readmit Episcopacy? Which no son of Charles returning but will most certainly bring back with him, if he regard the last and strictest charge of his father, to persevere in not the Doctrine only, but Government, of the Church of England, [and] not to neglect the speedy and effectual suppressing of Errors and Schisms,—among which he accounted Presbytery one of the chief. Or, if, notwithstanding that charge of his father, he submit to the Covenant, how will he keep faith to us with disobedience to him, or regard that faith given which must be founded on the breach of that last and solemnest paternal charge, and the reluctance, I may say the antipathy, which is in all kings against Presbyterian and Independent Discipline?"
Perhaps the most striking instance of omission in the new edition of matter that had appeared in the first is in the paragraph on the subject of Spiritual Liberty to which reference has been made at p. 653. He retains in that paragraph nearly all that related to Liberty of Conscience generally, but he carefully removes the two or three sentences in which he had intimated his individual opinion that there could be no perfect Liberty of Conscience without abolition of Church Establishments and dissolution of every form of connexion between Church and State. There was practical sagacity in this omission at the moment at which he was re-issuing his pamphlet. It was no time then to be obtruding upon the public, or upon the Presbyterians that were flocking in to the new Parliament, his peculiar Disestablishment notion, however precious it might be to himself. His real business was to stir up all, by any means, to the defence even yet of the Republican form of Government; in such an argument, addressed mainly to Presbyterians and other zealots for a State Church, the question of Disestablishment was rather to be avoided; nay, for himself, that question had faded into insignificance for the time in comparison with the vaster question whether the Republic should be preserved or the Stuarts brought back, and most willingly would he have been, assured of the preservation of the Republic even though a State Church should continue to be part and parcel of it, and the special battle of Disestablishment should have to be postponed. To keep out the Stuarts, to rouse dread and disgust even yet at the idea that the Stuarts should return, was the single all-including possibility, or impossibility, for which he was now striving. To this end it is that again and again in the course of the pamphlet he inserts new passages heightening the contrast between the glories and advantages of free Republican Government and the miseries and degradation of subjection to a Monarchy. Near the beginning there is an enlargement of this kind, to the extent of three pages, in which he reviews, in greater detail than before, the steps that had led to the establishment of the English Commonwealth; and appeals to his countrymen whether their experience of Commonwealth government had not been on the whole satisfactory. Had not the very speeches and writings of that period, he had asked in his first edition, "testified a spirit in this nation no less noble and well-fitted to the liberty of a Commonwealth than in the ancient Greeks or Romans"? In returning to that topic now, he cannot refrain from breaking out once more, though it should be the last time, in his characteristic vein of self-appreciation. "Nor was the heroic cause," he adds, "unsuccessfully defended to all Christendom against the tongue of a famous and thought invincible adversary, nor the constancy and fortitude that so nobly vindicated our liberty, our victory at once against two the most prevailing usurpers over mankind, Superstition and Tyranny, unpraised or uncelebrated in a written monument likely to outlive detraction, as it hath hitherto convinced or silenced not a few detractors, especially in parts abroad." Readers who may think that we are already too familiar with this strain may be reminded that Milton was here taking account of the contemptuous notices of his Defences of the Commonwealth in some of the recent Royalist pamphlets, and also that, as he dictated, the thought must have been passing in his mind that very probably his days were numbered, and those Defences of the Commonwealth would have to remain, after all, his last important bequest to the world.
There is proof that Milton had read the burlesque Censure of the Rota on the first edition. Not only are two or three sentences omitted or modified in consequence of remarks there made; but, in the considerable enlargements he thinks necessary for the support of his main notion of PERPETUITY OF THIS NATIONAL GREAT COUNCIL, he takes care to extend also his former references to Harrington's principle of Rotation and other doctrines. Of course, he was well aware that it was not Harrington himself that had complained of the slightness of the former references, but only some Royalist wit caricaturing Harrington together with himself. While disagreeing with Harrington, he shows his respect for him. The following are specimens of these particular enlargements:—
The Rotation Principle:—"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 the settling of too absolute a power if it should be perpetual: and this they call Partial Rotation. But I could wish that this wheel or partial wheel in State, if it be possible, might be avoided, as having too much, affinity with the Wheel of Fortune. For it appears not how this can be done without danger and mischance of putting out a great number of the best and ablest; in whose stead new elections may bring in as many raw, unexperienced, and otherwise affected, to the weakening and much altering for the worse of public transactions. Neither do I think a Perpetual Senate, especially chosen and entrusted by the people, much in this land to be feared, where the well-affected, either in a Standing Army or in a Settled Militia, have their arms in their own hands. Safest therefore to me it seems, and of least hazard or interruption to affairs, that none of the Grand Council be moved, unless by death or just conviction of some crime; for what can be expected firm or stedfast from a floating foundation? However, I forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be found in things of this nature, so disputable on either side."
Contrast of Harrington's Model with Milton's, and a Suggestion for the mode of Elections:—"And this annual Rotation of a Senate to consist of 300, as is lately propounded, requires also another Popular Assembly upward of 1000, with an answerable Rotation. Which, besides that it will be liable to all those inconveniencies found in the foresaid remedies, cannot but be troublesome and chargeable, both in their motion and their session, to the whole land,—unwieldy with their own bulk: unable in so great a number to mature their consultations as they ought, if any be allotted to them, and that they meet not from so many parts remote to sit a whole year leaguer in one place, only now and then to hold up a forest of fingers, or to convey each man his bean or ballot into the box, without reason shown or common deliberation; incontinent of secrets, if any be imparted to them; emulous and always jarring with the other Senate. The much better way doubtless will be, in this wavering condition of our affairs, to defer the changing or circumscribing of our Senate, more than may be done with ease, till the Commonwealth be thoroughly settled in peace and safety and they themselves give us the occasion.... Another way will be to well qualify and refine Elections: not committing all to the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but permitting only those of them who are rightly qualified to nominate as many as they will; and out of that number others of a better breeding to choose a less number more judiciously; till, after a third or fourth sifting and refining of exactest choice, they only be left chosen who are the due number, and seem by most voices the worthiest.... But, to prevent all mistrust, the People then will have their several Ordinary Assemblies (which will henceforth quite annihilate the odious power and name of Committees) in the chief towns of every County,—without the trouble, charge, or time lost, of summoning and assembling from so far, in so great a number, and so long residing from their own houses, or removing of their families,—to do as much at home in their several shires, entire or subdivided, towards the securing of their liberty, as a numerous Assembly of them all formed and convened on purpose with the wariest rotation."
Glance at some of Harrington's other notions:—"The way propounded [Milton's] is plain, easy, and open before us: without intricacies, without the introducement of new or obsolete forms or terms, or exotic models,—ideas that would effect nothing, but with a number of new injunctions to manacle the native liberty of mankind; turning all virtue into prescription, servitude, and necessity, to the great impairing and frustrating of Christian Liberty."
As if the very closeness of the vision of returning Royalty had rendered Milton's defiance of it more desperate and reckless, he inserts, wherever he can, some new expression of his contempt for Charles and all his family, and of his prophetic horror of the state of society they will bring in. Thus:—
"There will be a Queen of no less charge, in most likelihood outlandish and a Papist, besides a Queen-Mother, such already, together with both their Courts and numerous Train: then a Royal issue, and ere long 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."
But the most terrific new passage in prediction of the Restoration and its revenges is the following: in which the reader will observe also the recognition, as in one spurn of boundless scorn, of the Royalist scurrilities against himself:—
"Admit that Monarchy of itself may be convenient to some nations; yet to us who have thrown it out, received back again, it cannot but prove pernicious. For Kings to come, never forgetting their former ejection, will be sure to fortify and arm themselves sufficiently for the future against all such attempts hereafter from the People; who shall be then so narrowly watched and kept so low that, though they would never so fain, and at the same rate of their blood and treasure, they never shall be able to regain what they now have purchased and may enjoy, or to free themselves from any yoke imposed upon them. Nor will they dare to go about it,—utterly disheartened for the future, if these their highest attempts prove unsuccessful: which will be the triumph of all Tyrants hereafter over any People that shall resist oppression; and their song will then be to others How sped the Rebellious English?, to our posterity How sped the Rebels your fathers?.... Yet neither shall we obtain or buy at an easy rate this new gilded yoke which thus transports us. A new Royal Revenue must be found, a new Episcopal,—for those are individual: both which, being wholly dissipated or bought by private persons, or assigned for service done, and especially to the Army, cannot be recovered without a general detriment and confusion to men's estates, or a heavy imposition on all men's purses,—benefit to none but to the worst and ignoblest sort of men, whose hope is to be either the ministers of Court riot and excess or the gainers by it. But, not to speak more of losses and extraordinary levies on our estates, what will then be the revenges and offences remembered and returned, not only by the Chief Person, but by all his adherents: accounts and reparations that will be required, suits, indictments, inquiries, discoveries, complaints, informations,—who knows against whom or how many, though perhaps neuters,—if not to utmost infliction, yet to imprisonment, fines, banishment, or molestation. If not these, yet disfavour, discountenance, disregard, and contempt on all but the known Royalist, or whom he favours, will be plenteous. Nor let the new-royalized Presbyterians persuade themselves that their old doings, though, now recanted, will be forgotten, whatever conditions be contrived or trusted on. Will they not believe this, nor remember the Pacification how it was kept to the Scots, how other solemn promises many a time to us? Let them but now read the diabolical forerunning libels, the faces, the gestures, that now appear foremost and briskest in all public places as the harbingers of those that are in expectation to reign over us; let them but hear the insolencies, the menaces, the insultings of our newly animated common enemies, crept lately out of their holes, their Hell I might say, by the language of their infernal pamphlets, the spew of every drunkard, every ribald: nameless, yet not for want of licence, but for very shame of their own vile persons; not daring to name themselves while they traduce others by name, and give us to foresee that they intend to second their wicked words, if ever they have power, with more wicked deeds. Let our zealous backsliders [the Presbyterians] forethink now with themselves how their necks, yoked with these tigers of Bacchus,—these new fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating tub, inspired with nothing holier than the venereal pox,—can draw one way, under Monarchy, to the establishing of Church-Discipline with these new-disgorged Atheisms. Yet shall they not have the honour to yoke with these, but shall be yoked under them: these shall plough on their backs. And do they among them who are so forward to bring in the Single Person think to be by him trusted or long regarded? So trusted they shall be and so regarded as by Kings are wont reconciled enemies,—neglected and soon after discarded, if not prosecuted for old traitors, the first inciters, beginners, and more than to the third part actors, of all that followed."
Milton, does not deny that the vast majority of the nation desire the restoration of the King. He admits the fact and scouts it. He asserts that by "the trial of just battle" the larger part of the population of England long ago "lost the right of their election what the form of Government shall be," and that, if even a majority of the rest would now vote for Kingship, their wishes must go for nothing. "Is it just or reasonable that most voices, against the main end of Government, should enslave the less number that would be free? More just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain (which can be no wrong to them) their liberty than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves." When he wrote this, he must have known well enough that he was writing in vain. He confesses as much in his peroration. He confesses it there even by that single modification of the language which might seem at first sight the only sign of prudential concession and anticipation of personal consequences throughout the whole pamphlet. In citing the prophecy of Jeremiah he omits the passage exulting in God's decree of exile against Coniah and his seed for ever (ante p. 654-655). But this is no prudential concession, no softening down in anticipation that the passage might be produced against him. Of that state of mind, of any fear of consequences whatever, there is not a trace throughout the recast of his pamphlet. He is defying and daring the worst, and has thrown in already every possible addition of matter of insult to the coming Charles. He omits the passage about Coniah precisely because its application to Charles is unfortunately no longer possible; and the peroration for the rest is modified by the sorrow that so it should be. He will exhort against the Restoration to his latest breath; but he is looking across the Restoration now, and sending his words on to an unknown posterity.
"What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss 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 her perverse inhabitants are deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoken should happen (which Thou suffer not who didst create Mankind free, nor Thou next who didst redeem us from being servants of men!) to be the last words of our expiring Liberty. But I trust I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and ingenuous men,—to some perhaps whom God may raise up of these stones to become children of reviving Liberty, and may reclaim, though they seem now choosing them a Captain back for Egypt, to bethink themselves a little and consider whither they are rushing; to exhort this torrent also of the people not to be so impetuous, but to keep their due channel; and, at length recovering and uniting their better resolutions, now that they see already how open and unbounded the insolence and rage is of our common enemies, to stay these ruinous proceedings, justly and timely fearing to what a precipice of destruction the deluge of this epidemic madness would hurry us, through the general defection of a misguided and abused multitude."