all her outward strength to justice: justice, therefore, must needs be strongest, both in her own and in the strength of truth. But if a king may do among men whatsoever is his will and pleasure, and notwithstanding, be unaccountable to men, then, contrary to his magnified wisdom of Zorobabel, neither truth nor justice, but the king, is strongest of other things, which that Persian monarch himself, in the midst of all his pride and glory, durst not assume. KINGS NOT ABOVE LAW. And were that true, which is most false, that all kings are the Lord's anointed, it were yet absurd to think that the anointment of God should be, as it were, a charm against law, and gave them privilege, who punish others, to sin themselves unpunishably. The high-priest was the Lord's anointed as well as any king, and with the same consecrated oil: yet Solomon had put to death Abiathar, had it not been for other respects than that anointment. If God Himself say to kings, "Touch not Mine anointed," meaning His chosen people, as is evident in that Psalm, yet no man will argue thence that he protects them from civil laws if they offend; then certainly, though David, as a private man, and in his own cause, feared to lift his hand against the Lord's anointed, much less can this forbid the law, or disarm justice from having legal power against any king. No other supreme magistrate, in what kind of government soever, lays claim to any such enormous privilege; wherefore then should any king, who is but one kind of magistrate, and set over the people for no other end than they? [IN the wars of the Commonwealth, almost all the genius and learning of England were enlisted on the side of liberty. The Royalists, after the downfall of the monarchy, were reduced to the humiliating necessity of employing a foreigner to plead their cause before Europe. The hireling they wanted was found in Claude de Saumaise (latinized into Salmasius), a professor in the University of Leyden. He enjoyed considerable reputation in his day, for minute and accurate scholarship. His published works, which were very numerous, display considerable erudition, but are confused in arrangement, poor in style, loose and untrustworthy in the statement of facts, combined with unbounded arrogance and conceit. He had already written on the other side, and denounced Episcopacy in the strongest terms; but allured by the bribe of a hundred Jacobusses, and, perhaps, attracted even more by the compliment of being selected by Charles the Second to plead his father's cause against the people and Parliament of England, he, unhappily for his own reputation, consented, and, in the year 1649, published his ". "Defensio Regia pro Carolo I." Whatever may have been the celebrity of Salmasius as a grammarian, he proved his incompetency as a political writer or controversialist. He chose his ground badly, and defended it feebly. Not contenting himself with the discussing the matter in hand, he strenuously asserted the doctrine of the divine right of kings, and insisted upon the duty of passive obedience, even to a tyrant. The Council of State deemed it important that an adequate reply should be made to what was regarded as the official protest of the dethroned dynasty, and they called upon their most able associate to undertake the task. Under date of 8th January, 1650, is the laconic Order in Council: * Published in 1651. "That Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the book of Salmasius, and when he hath done itt, bring itt to the Council." He was at this time suffering from some defect of vision caused by excessive devotion to his studies in early life, and was warned that the price of obedience would be the total loss of sight. Yet he did not hesitate for a moment. "I resolved," he says, "to make the short interval of sight which was left me to enjoy, as beneficial to the public interest as possible." His two sonnets on his blindness are familiar. Who does not remember the noble lines in that addressed to Cyriack Skinner? "Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, or bate one jot Of which all Europe rings from side to side." The result of this noble act of self-sacrifice was The Defence of the People of England. It was written in Latin, and at once attained immense popularity throughout Europe. The translation of it, from which our selections are taken, however excellent, fails altogether to convey any adequate idea of the wonderful beauty, force, and eloquence of the original. Milton's style is like the bow of Ulysses, which could be bent by none save its owner, but which, in his hands, was a weapon of irresistible power. There is little doubt that the unequal contest was fatal alike to the reputation and the life of his antagonist. Salmasius died soon afterwards, as was generally believed, from chagrin at the ridicule with which he was covered, and the disgraceful defeat which he sustained. It might be difficult to justify fully the scorn and bitterness of Milton's invectives against his opponent. The following circumstances should, however, be taken into account in fairly estimating them. Salmasius was a mercenary parasite and apostate, who, impelled by contemptible vanity and avarice, had prostituted his powers, such as they were, to an attack upon principles which Milton held dearer than liberty, or life itself. Frightfully severe as was the castigation which he received, it was not more severe than he deserved. It should be again remembered that he was a foreigner, and the citizen of a free republic. What right had he to sit in judgment upon the English people? Milton's patriotic heart burnt with a passionate indignation against the hireling scribe who thus dared to intrude his paltry criticisms upon a great act of national judgment. For proud as Milton was, in nothing did he feel a greater pride than that he was an ENGLISHMAN; and however vehement and pitiless his invectives may have been against his DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. 161 fellow-citizens, when they offered themselves as the defenders of the tyranny of the late king, they were mild and merciful when compared with those with which he assailed this impudent intruder upon our domestic affairs. Still further, it should be borne in mind that the doctrines advocated by Salmasius were so monstrous as to be subversive of all freedom, and would, if carried out, have laid the people of Europe, bound hand and foot, prostrate beneath the heel of tyrants, both in Church and State. Milton felt-and felt justly-that such a man and such a book deserved rebuke rather than argument. And, lastly, it should not be forgotten that his violence was provoked by the language of his opponent, who carried to excess the license allowed, in his day, to controversialists, and hesitated at no foulness and falseness of calumny in his attack upon the people and parliament of England. Omitting any notice of those passages of a merely personal kind, in which Milton assails the character, history, and scholarship of Salmasius (showing him to be contemptible in all of them), the argument of the treatise has been ably stated in the following summary:- "Therein is maintained (in opposition to Salmasius, who had asserted the irresponsibility of kings to their subjects) that all civil power emanates from the people; that the magistrates, as well as the people, should be, and are, subject to the law; and the sanction of history, with her examples from all the most celebrated Commonwealths, is produced in support of this; that the regal office itself is merely a trust committed to the king by the people on certain conditions expressed or implied, that he is, therefore, accountable to them for breach of that trust, and, if he betray it, is liable to be cashiered, or even punished capitally, should such be the will of the community: hence that Charles the First, being guilty of misgovernment and breach of trust, was lawfully and justly put to death. These positions he, after his manner, illustrates and confirms by an appeal to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, to the most eminent writers, poets, historians, and lawgivers of antiquity, to the laws of nature and of nations, and, lastly, to our own municipal laws." It has been disputed whether Milton received any pecuniary reward for the production of this masterly defence. Toland and others have affirmed that he was presented with £1,000 by the Council. Milton himself, however, most explicitly declares, in his Secunda Defensio, that he never received one penny for it or any similar production. The truth appears to be that the Council ordered that "thanks be given to Mr. Milton on behalf of the Commonwealth," and made him a grant of money; but that this grant was subsequently rescinded, at his own request, in order that he might be clear from the suspicion M of having defended the cause he had espoused for hire, as Salmasius had done. The order for payment was, therefore, cancelled, and the following resolution substituted for it :-"The Councill, taking notice of the many and good services performed by Mr. John Milton, their secretary for foreign languages, to this State and Commonwealth, particularlie for his Booke in vindication of the Parliament and People of England against the Calumnies and Invectives of Salmasius, have thought fit to declare their resentment and good acceptance of the same; and that the thanks of the Councill be returned to Mr. Milton, and their sense represented in that behalf.”] INTRODUCTION.-THE MOTIVES WHICH PROMPTED THE AUTHOR TO UNDERTAKE THIS TASK, AND THE SPIRIT IN WHICH HE ENTERED UPON IT. I AM about to discourse of matters neither inconsiderable nor common, but how a most potent king, after he had trampled upon the laws of the nation, and given a shock to its religion, and begun to rule at his own will and pleasure, was at last subdued in the field by his own subjects, who had undergone a long slavery under him; how afterwards he was cast into prison, and when he gave no ground, either by words or actions, to hope better things of him, he was finally, by the supreme Council of the kingdom, condemned to die, and beheaded before the very gates of the royal palace. I shall likewise relate (which will much conduce to the easing men's minds of a great superstition) by what right, especially according to our law, this judgment was given, and all these matters transacted; and shall easily defend my valiant and worthy countrymen (who have extremely well deserved of all subjects and nations in the world) from the most wicked calumnies both of domestic and foreign railers, and especially from the reproaches of this most vain and empty sophister, who sets up for a captain and ringleader to all the rest. For what king's majesty sitting upon an exalted throne, ever shone so brightly as that of the people of England then did, when shaking off that old superstition, which had prevailed a long time, they gave judgment upon the king himself, or |