Thus much I had to say, and I suppose what may be enough to those who are not avariciously bent otherwise, touching the likeliest means to get hirelings out of the church; than which nothing can more conduce to truth, to peace, and all happiness, both in church and state. If I be not heard and believed, the event will bear me witness to have spoken truth; and I in the mean while have borne me witness, not out of season, to the church and my country."*

Unhappily the nation, maddened by the cries of faction and given over to anarchy, was in no mood to listen to, or heed the sober words and the warning expostulations of its great monitor. Still Milton's fresh appearance as a political writer, after his lengthened withdrawal from public observation, was peculiarly gratifying to his old republican admirers, some of whom had suspected him of alienation from their cause since his repose under the shadow of the Protectoral government. These writings however proved his consistency, and showed him to be still the Milton of old times, and

*Prose Works.

ardently as ever wedded to the "good old cause."

In a letter addressed to him, upon the publication of the treatise on the civil power in ecclesiastical matters, a Mr. Wall of Causham, under date of May 29, 1659, says, "I confess I have even in my privacy in the country oft had thoughts of you, and that with much respect for your friendship to truth in your early years, and in bad times. But I was uncertain whether your relation to the court, though I think that a commonwealth was more friendly to you than a court, had not clouded your former light; but your last book resolved that doubt."*

Meanwhile the general disorder found no hand competent to quell it, and the disorganization grew apace.

Milton, grieved, disquieted, and alarmed by the confusion of parties, and indignant at the outrages of the army, collected his faculties, and 'made one more desperate and almost despairing effort to retrieve the political situation, pub

* Birche's Life of Milton, p. 42. Prose Works, Vol. II., p. 388 Symmons' Life, pp. 415, 416.

lishing in 1659 his celebrated pamphlet entitled, "The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth," which he sadly hoped might not contain "the last words of expiring liberty."

This he addressed to General Monk, then governor of Scotland and commander of the Puritan army in that kingdom, to which posts he had been promoted by Cromwell.

The treatise on the Commonwealth is sadly grand, and its eloquence is full of tears. In it Milton says,

"The Parliament of England, assisted by a great number of the people who appeared and stuck to them faithfully in defence of religion and their civil liberties, judging kingship by long experience a government unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous, justly and magnanimously abolished it, turning regal bondage into a free Commonwealth, to the admiration and terror of our emulous neighbors. They took themselves not bound by the light of nature or religion to any former covenant, from which the king himself, by many forfeitures of a latter date or discovery, and our own long

consideration thereon, had more and more unbound us both to himself and his posterity, as hath been ever the justice and prudence of all wise nations that have ejected tyranny.

"They covenanted to preserve the king's person and authority, in the preservation of true religion and our liberties; not in his endeavoring to bring in upon our consciences a popish religion, upon our liberties thraldom, upon our lives destruction by his occasioning if not complotting, as was afterwards discovered, the Irish massacre; his fomenting and arming the rebellion; his covert league with the rebels against us; his refusing more than seven times propositions most just and necessary to the true religion and our liberties, tendered him by the Parliament both of England and Scotland."

Passing then to another consideration, he asks indignantly if the Commonwealth be a failure? "And what will they at best say of us, and of the whole English name, but scoffingly, as of that foolish builder mentioned by our Saviour, who began to build a tower, and was not able to finish it. Where is this goodly

tower of a Commonwealth, which the English began to build?"

a.

He then urgently remonstrates with the nation in regard to its proposed invitation to Charles Stuart to ascend the rebuilt throne; showing vividly and prophetically what a wretched tide of lewdness and profanity would overwhelm the state upon the restoration of the reckless and outlawed libertine who was even at that critical hour lapped in the embraces of his continental mistresses, or else engaged in the fitting and congenial pursuit of hunting in the bogs of France.

Next passing to the consideration of other matters, he shows "wherein freedom and a flourishing condition would be more ample and secure to England under a Commonwealth than under a kingship." 'Admitting that monarchy may be convenient to some nations,' he warns England to beware of it; for the remade king, not forgetting his former ejection, will arm and fortify himself against all similar attempts in future. The people would then be "so narrowly watched and kept so low, that though they would never so fain, and at the