From the Parliament indeed the response was only indirect; but every atom of such indirect response was a dead and contemptuous negative.  Though, when Milton published the pamphlet, he was entitled to assume that the compact between Monk and the Secluded Members whom he had restored guaranteed a continuance of the Commonwealth form of Government, the entire tenor of their proceedings during the five-and-twenty days to which they confined their sittings (Feb. 2l-March 16, 1659-60) was such as to undeceive him and others on that point, and to show that, though they abstained from abolishing the Commonwealth themselves, they meant to leave the succeeding full and free Parliament they had called at perfect liberty to do so.  No other construction could be put upon their votes even in ecclesiastical matters.  Hardly was Milton’s pamphlet out when he knew that they had voted the revival of the Westminster Assembly’s Confession of Faith as the standard of doctrine in the National Church (March 2), and the revival of the Solemn League and Covenant as a document of perpetual national obligation (March 5).  Then followed (March 14) their vote for mapping out all England and Wales according to the strict pattern of the Scottish Presbyterian organization.  But, that there might be no mistake, their votes predetermining the composition of the coming Parliament were also in the direction of the admission of Royalists and the exclusion of those that could be called Fanatics for the Republic.  The engagement to be faithful to the Commonwealth without King or House of Lords was annulled (March 13); the clauses disqualifying even the active and conspicuous Royalists of the Civil Wars were far from stringent; and the very act by which the House dissolved itself contained a proviso saving the legal and constitutional rights of the old House of Lords and pointing to the restitution of the Peerage.  How significant also that scene in the House on the last day of their sittings, Friday, March 16, when Mr. Crewe moved for a vote of execration on the Regicides, and poor Thomas Scott, standing up on the floor, and reckless though the words should seal his doom, declared himself to be one of the blood-stained band and claimed the fact as his highest earthly honour!  What Scott did that day in the House Milton had done even more publicly a fortnight before in the daring peroration of his pamphlet.  From March 16, 1659-60, Milton and Scott, whoever else, might regard themselves as in the list for the future hangman.

In the list for the future hangman!  It is a strong expression, but true historically to the very letter.  Read the following from a scurrilous pamphlet, of six pages in shabby print, called The Character of the Rump, which was out in London on Saturday the 17th of March, the day after the dissolution of the Parliament:—­

  “An ingenious person hath observed that Scott is the Rump’s man
  Thomas; and they might have said to him, when he was so busy with
  the General,