Milton naturally opposes the theory of the divine right of kings. For the whole people are "of God," and supreme power is vested in the people. ... for so all of us are of God, we are all his offspring. So that this universal right of Almighty God's, and the interests that he has in princes, and their thrones, and all that belongs to them, does not at all derogate from the people's right; but that notwithstanding all this, all other kings, not particularly and by name appointed by God, owe their sovereignty to the people only, and consequently are accountable to them for the management of it.101 The general thesis of the book is that God is in favor of liberty, and that Christ came to confirm our liberties.102 God takes a direct part in that spirit in the whole of history: Or do you think that God takes no care at all of civil affairs? God has not so modelled the government of the world as to make it the duty of any civil community to submit to the cruelties of tyrants. 103 And God leads the people, being in them: you say, that all kings are of God, and that therefore the people ought not to resist them, be they never such tyrants. I answer you, the convention of the people, their votes, their acts, are likewise of God. . . so certain is it, that free assemblies of the body of the people are of God, and that naturally affords the same argument for their right of restraining princes from going beyond their bounds, and rejecting them if there be occasion. 104 The assembly of the commons is essentially the organ of the people's will: .. by the very same reason the commons apart must have the sovereign power without the king, and a power of judging the 101 Prose Works, I, 47. 103 Ibid., I, 86. king himself; because before there ever was a king, they, in the name of the whole body of the nation, held councils and parliaments, had the power of judicature, made laws, and made the kings themselves. . . .105 The end is an exhortation to the English people: liberty is grounded on virtue, and God watches over the fulfilment of that pact: After the performing so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing that is mean and little, not so much as to think of, much less to do, anything but what is great and sublime. Which to attain to, this is your only way: as you have subdued your enemies in the field, so to make appear, that unarmed, and in the highest outward peace and tranquility, you of all mankind are best able to subdue ambition, avarice, the love of riches. . . . But if it should fall out otherwise (which God forbid), if as you have been valiant in war, you should grow debauched in peace, you that have had such visible demonstrations of the goodness of God to yourselves, and his wrath against your enemies; . . . you will find in a little time, that God's displeasure against you will be greater than it has been against your adversaries, greater than his grace and favour has been to yourselves, which you have had larger experience of than any other nation under heaven.106 Milton is no longer so sure of the people as he would like to be; he knows his party is in the minority; although that minority is in power, Milton is somewhat anxious about the future. The first Defence ends on a little disguised threat to the people. The Second Defence will end on advice to Cromwell which proves that Milton was no longer sure even of the governing minority. Thus, even at the moment when the Kingdom was nearest, it seemed to be receding from the vision of the poet and prophet. It is interesting to give some specimens of his insults to Salmasius, which make up a fair part of the book. 106 Ibid., I, 212. 105 Ibid., I, 176. The art of insult was certainly not yet a lost art in the seventeenth century: You say, it is a maxim of the English, "That enemies are rather to be spared than friends "; and that therefore, "we conceived we ought not to spare our king's life, because he had been our friend." You impudent liar, what mortal ever heard this whimsy before you invented it? But we will excuse it. You could not bring in that threadbare flourish, of our being more fierce than our own mastiffs, (which now comes in the fifth time, and will as oft again before we come to the end of your book,) without some such introduction. We are not so much more fierce than our own mastiffs, as you are more hungry than any dog whatsoever, who return so greedily to what you have vomited up so often.107 Some are princes' secretaries, some their cup-bearers, some masters of the revels; I think you had best be master of the perjuries to some of them. You shall not be master of the ceremonies, you are too much a clown for that; but their treachery and perfidiousness shall be under your care.108 And I pray by whom were you desired [to write]? By your wife, I suppose who, they say, exercises a kingly right and jurisdiction over you; and whenever she has a mind to it . . . cries: "Either write, or let us fight"; that made you write perhaps, lest the signal should be given. Or were you asked by Charles the younger, and that profligate gang of vagabond courtiers, and like a second Balaam called upon by another Balak to restore a desperate cause by ill writing, that was lost by ill fighting? That may be; but there is this difference, for he was a wise understanding man, and rid upon an ass that could speak, to curse the people of God: thou art a very talkative ass thyself, and rid by a woman. . . . But they say, that a little after you had written this book you repented of what you had done. It is well, if it be so; and to make your repentance public, I think the best course that you can take will be, for this long book that you have writ, to take a halter, and make one long letter of yourself. So Judas Iscariot repented. . . . Christ delivered all men from bondage, and you endeavour to enslave all mankind. Never question, since you have been such a villain to God himself, his church, and all mankind in general, but that the same fate attends you that befell your equal, out of despair rather than 108 Ibid., I, 152. 107 Ibid., I, 92. repentance, to be weary of your life, and hang yourself, and burst asunder as he did; and to send beforehand that faithless and treacherous conscience . . . to that place of torment that is prepared for you,109 In 1652, the royalist party opposed to Milton the Regii sanguinis clamor ad cœlum, which consisted mostly of a personal attack upon him. In June, 1654, Milton replied in his Defensio secunda pro populo Anglicano. This is perhaps the best of all Milton's prose works; it can be read through with pleasure. Fine passages are numerous; an important part of the work is autobiographical; another part is made up of portraits of the best known characters of the republican party; and the end develops Milton's fundamental principles in political theory. This we shall have to use in our study of Milton's ideas (in Part II); for the rest, it is impossible to quote here even a small part of the many beautiful pages of the Defensio secunda; they are so well known and so easily accessible that it is needless to draw attention to them. Let us note only Milton's warning to Cromwell and again to the English people. Milton was not pleased with Cromwell's religious policy. His pamphlets written in 1659 abundantly show why: he wanted the Church to be disestablished, and he wanted the suppression of all paid clergy. But Cromwell, for his own ends, went the opposite way. Milton warns him in the Second Defence: Then, if you leave the church to its own government, and relieve yourself and the other public functionaries from a charge so onerous, and so incompatible with your functions; and will no longer 109 Ibid., I, 210-11. "Beforehand," probably because the body will only be sent to hell at the Last Judgment. It may seem that Milton was still a dualist in 1651; but perhaps little weight can be allowed to such a rhetorical passage. suffer two powers, so different as the civil and the ecclesiastical, to commit fornication together, and by their mutual and delusive aids in appearance to strengthen, but in reality to weaken and finally to subvert, each other; if you shall remove all power of persecution out of the church, (but persecution will never cease, so long as men are bribed to preach the gospel by a mercenary salary, which is forcibly extorted, rather than gratuitously bestowed, which serves only to poison religion and to strangle truth,) you will then effectually have cast those money-changers out of the temple, who do not merely truckle with doves but with the Dove itself, with the Spirit of the Most High.110 Besides, Milton was suspicious of the coming tyranny. He asked Cromwell to surround himself with the old republicans, the faithful companions of his wars; and Cromwell was successively to cause to be arrested - on some ground or other-Bradshaw, Vane, for whom Milton had a great regard, and Colonel Overton, who was a private friend of Milton's. In 1654, things had not yet gone so far. Cromwell was still the hero; but already too many things are being asked of him in that Defensio secunda; Milton surely has his doubts, only too amply confirmed later. He has his doubts also of the people's steadfastness, and in his conclusion very neatly "washes his hands" of it, and claims that, anyhow, "whatever turn things take " he has done his duty. He openly tells his fellow-countrymen: "If the conclusion do not answer to the beginning, that is their concern. I have delivered my testimony." No great signs of trust in this conclusion: With respect to myself, whatever turn things may take, I thought that my exertions on the present occasion would be serviceable to my country; and as they have been cheerfully bestowed, I hope that they have not been bestowed in vain. And I have not circum 110 Ibid., I, 293. |