writs for the recruiting of their body by a large number of like-minded additional members; but he will assume that the pamphlet may yet answer its purpose, with hardly a change of phraseology.  No longer, it is true, does the power lie with the Rump, recruited or unrecruited; it lies now in the unexpected Parliament of the Residuary Rumpers plus Monk’s restored representatives of the pre-Commonwealth period of the Long Parliament.  But he will suppose the best even after that surprise.  There is, at any rate, a more “full and frequent” Parliament than before:  and there has been no declaration hitherto of any intention to subvert the Commonwealth.  On the contrary, had not Monk, both in his speech to the Secluded Members before readmitting them, and also in his Declaration or Address to the Army published after their re-admission, used the language of a true Commonwealth’s-man, and even called God to witness that his only aim was “God’s glory and the settlement of these nations upon Commonwealth foundations”?  Had not the Secluded Members virtually made a compact with Monk upon these terms?  Milton will not, for the present, suppose either Monk or the Parliament false in the main matter.  He will only suppose that they have perceived, with himself, the infatuated drift of the popular humour towards a restoration of Royalty, and will themselves listen, and allow the country to listen, to what he had written on that subject two or three weeks ago.

The despondency which he disguises in the preface appears in the pamphlet itself.  Or rather it is a despondency dashed with a sanguine remnant of faith that all might yet be well, and that the means of perpetuating a Republic, all contrary appearances notwithstanding, might yet be shown to be “ready and easy.”  The use of these two words in the title of such a pamphlet at such a time is very characteristic.  It was the public theorist, however, that ventured on them, rather than the secret and real man.  Throughout the pamphlet there is a sad and fierce undertone, as of one knowing that what he is prophesying as easy will never come to pass.

About half of the pamphlet consists of a declamation in general on the advantages of a Commonwealth Government over a Kingly Government, and on the dishonour, inconveniences, and dangers, to the British Islands in particular, if they should relapse into the one form of Government after having had so much prosperous experience of the other.  In the following specimen of the declamation the reader will note the prophecy of actual events as far as to the Revolution of 1688:—­