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, honour, safety, all concernments divine or human, to keep up trading: if, lastly, after all this light among us, the same reason shall pass for current, to put our necks again under kingship, as was made use of by the Jews to return back to Egypt, and to the worship of their idol queen, because they falsely imagined that they then lived in more plenty and prosperity; our condition is not sound, but rotten, both in religion and all civil prudence; and will bring us soon, the way we are marching, to those calamities, which attend always and unavoidably on luxury, all national judgments under foreign and domestic slavery: so far we shall be from mending our condition by monarchizing our government, whatever new conceit now possesses us.

However, with all hazard I have ventured what I thought my duty to speak in season, and to forewarn my country in time; wherein I doubt not but there

be many wise men in all places and degrees, but am sorry the effects of wisdom are so little seen among us. Many circumstances and particulars I could have added in those things whereof I have spoken: but a few main matters now put speedily in execution, will suffice to recover us, and set all right: and there will want at no time who are good at circumstances; but men who set their minds on main matters, and sufficiently urge them in these most difficult times I find not many.

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 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 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 from 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.

NOTES

AREOPAGITICA

Page 5. trivial and malignant encomium. Bishop Joseph Hall had, Milton argues, flattered Parliament in A Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament whereas he had himself offered honorable praise in his reply to that work, An Apology for Smectymnuus. See Introduction.

Page 6. I could name him. Isocrates wrote an oration, Areopagiticus (355 B. C.), in which he professed to plead before the ecclesia for the restoration of the court of the Areopagus to its ancient function in the Athenian democracy. Milton's speech, similarly written for a similar occasion and purpose, was therefore by him similarly entitled.

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Page 7. that order. Before 1643 regulation of the press had been solely under the jurisdiction of the crown through the Court of Star Chamber. In 1637 that body had decreed the publication of seditious, scismaticall, or offensive Bookes or Pamphlets" to be a punishable offense and had required that all books and pamphlets be licensed by persons appointed for the purpose and entered in the register of the Stationers' Company. The excitement ensuing upon the calling of the Long Parliament in 1640, followed by the abolition of the Star Chamber, had practically put an end to all regulation of the press. The enormous increase in publications of all sorts, especially of pamphlets expressing royalist sentiment or religious heresy, made Parliament increasingly anxious to bring matters once more under control. The result was the order of June 14, 1643, here referred to; viz:

Whereas divers good Orders have bin lately made by both Houses of Parliament, for suppressing the great late abuses and frequent disorders in Printing many false, forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous, and unlicensed Papers, Pamphlets, and Books to the great defamation of Religion and government. Which orders (notwithstanding the diligence of the Company of Stationers, to put them in full execution) having taken little or no effect: By reason the Bill in preparation, for redresse of the said disorders, hath hitherto bin retarded through the present distractions, and very many, as well Stationers and Printers, as others of sundry other professions not free of the