We are now in the winter of 1655-6, and we have seen no Secretarial work from Milton since his letters and other documents in the business of the Piedmontese Protestants in May, June, and July, 1655.  Officially, therefore, he had had another relapse into idleness.  Not, however, into total idleness. “Scriptum Dom.  Protectoris Reipublicae Anglicae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, &c., ex Consensa atque Sententia Concilii Sui Edictum, in quo Hujus Reipublicae Causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur, 1655” ("Manifesto of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland.  Ireland, &c., put forth by the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice of the cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated, 1655"), is the title of a Latin document, of the length of about twenty such pages as the present, now always included in editions of Milton’s prose-writings, on the probability, though not quite the certainty, that it was Milton’s performance.  If so, it was the third great document in the nature of a Declaration of War furnished by Milton for the Commonwealth, the two former having been his Latin version of the Declaration of the Causes of War against the Scots in June 1650 (IV. 228) and his similar version of the Declaration against the Dutch in July 1652 (IV. 482-483).  The present manifesto was perhaps a more difficult document to draft than either of those had been, inasmuch as Cromwell had to justify in it his recent attack upon the Spanish possessions in the West Indies.  Accordingly, the manifesto had been prepared with some pains.  It passed the Council finally on the 26th of October, 1655, four days after the Spanish ambassador Cardenas had left England, and two days after the Treaty between Cromwell and France had been signed;[1] and the Latin copies of it were out in London on the 9th of November.[2] Unlike the previous Declarations against the Scots and the Dutch, which had been printed in several languages, it appears to have been printed in Latin only.

[Footnote 1:  Council Order Book of date.]

[Footnote 2:  Dated copy among the Thomason Pamphlets.]

A general notion of the document will be obtained from, an extract or two in translation.  The opening is as follows:—­

“That the causes that induced us to our recent attack on certain Islands in the West Indies, now for some time past in the possession of the Spaniards, are just and in the highest degree reasonable, there is no one but will easily understand if only he will reflect in what manner that King and his subjects have always conducted themselves towards the English nation in that tract of America ...  Whenever they have opportunity, though without the least reason of justice, and with no provocation of injury, they are incessantly killing, murdering, nay butchering in cold blood, our countrymen there, as they think fit, seizing their goods and fortunes, destroying their plantations and houses, capturing