When the king was about to return, he published “The Mode of Establishing a Free Commonwealth.” This was the last blast blown to rouse the people from their lethargy. With a prophetic energy did he predict the ills that would fall upon the nation, should the king again be established. How sadly have his words been realized in the gilded misery that now surrounds his country, where starving millions toil like beasts of the field to fatten a licentious and debased aristocracy!
In this book he told the people that “no government was nearer the precepts of Christ than a free Commonwealth, wherein they who are the greatest are perpetual servants to the public, and 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.” After extolling the excellent beauty of freedom, and exhorting them to stand by their rights, he thus concludes, with these passages so full of grand and pathetic eloquence.
“I have no more to say at present; few words will save us, well considered; few and easy things, now seasonably done. But if the people be so affected as to prostitute religion and liberty to the vain and groundless apprehension, that nothing but Kingship can restore trade, not remembering the frequent plagues and pestilences that then wasted this city, such as through God’s mercy we never have felt since; and that trade flourishes nowhere more than in the free Commonwealths of Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries, before their eyes at this day; yet if trade be grown so craving and importunate, through the profuse living of tradesmen, that nothing can support it but the luxurious expenses of a nation upon trifles or superfluities, so as if the people generally should betake themselves to frugality, it might prove a dangerous matter, lest tradesmen should mutiny for want of trading; and that therefore we must forego, and set to sale religion, liberty, honor, safety, all concernments, divine or human, to keep up trading. What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss, “The Good Old Cause;” it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to back-sliders. Thus much I should perhaps have said, though I was 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 spoke should happen, [which Thou suffer not, who didst create mankind free! nor Thou next who didst redeem us from being the servants of men!] to be the last words of our expiring liberty.”
The political works of this great man have been diligently suppressed, and his political fame traduced; while they, who could not deny him merit, have been busy before the world in lauding him as a poet, thinking thus to lead men off from a knowledge of that wherein consisted his true greatness. We question much whether the dullest mind could read these books now, without being roused and filled with enthusiasm for this apostle of liberty, and for his cause.
In them he nobly vindicates the people and their rights. “The Good Old Cause,” as he calls it, warms him up, and he writes with an exulting energy that would make your blood gush with delight. His opinions were not the distempered thoughts of a factionist. He never allowed his feelings to be warped by a selfish regard for party advancement. He knew no party, but generously devoted his whole soul to the cause of his country, and in defense of the rights of mankind. In his old age his greatest glory was, that he had always written and spoken openly in defense of liberty and against slavery.
The truths which he wrote in his matured years, as applying to the condition of his unfortunate country, were but repetitions of the faith of his youth, as he had powerfully expressed it in his Comus.
“Impostor, do not charge most innocent Nature,
As if she would her children should be riotous
With her abundance; she, good cateress,
Means her provision only to the good,