to the establishing of Church-Discipline with these new-disgorged Atheisms.  Yet shall they not have the honour to yoke with these, but shall be yoked under them:  these shall plough on their backs.  And do they among them who are so forward to bring in the Single Person think to be by him trusted or long regarded?  So trusted they shall be and so regarded as by Kings are wont reconciled enemies,—­neglected and soon after discarded, if not prosecuted for old traitors, the first inciters, beginners, and more than to the third part actors, of all that followed.”

Milton, does not deny that the vast majority of the nation desire the restoration of the King.  He admits the fact and scouts it.  He asserts that by “the trial of just battle” the larger part of the population of England long ago “lost the right of their election what the form of Government shall be,” and that, if even a majority of the rest would now vote for Kingship, their wishes must go for nothing.  “Is it just or reasonable that most voices, against the main end of Government, should enslave the less number that would be free?  More just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain (which can be no wrong to them) their liberty than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves.”  When he wrote this, he must have known well enough that he was writing in vain.  He confesses as much in his peroration.  He confesses it there even by that single modification of the language which might seem at first sight the only sign of prudential concession and anticipation of personal consequences throughout the whole pamphlet.  In citing the prophecy of Jeremiah he omits the passage exulting in God’s decree of exile against Coniah and his seed for ever (ante p. 654-655).  But this is no prudential concession, no softening down in anticipation that the passage might be produced against him.  Of that state of mind, of any fear of consequences whatever, there is not a trace throughout the recast of his pamphlet.  He is defying and daring the worst, and has thrown in already every possible addition of matter of insult to the coming Charles.  He omits the passage about Coniah precisely because its application to Charles is unfortunately no longer possible; and the peroration for the rest is modified by the sorrow that so it should be.  He will exhort against the Restoration to his latest breath; but he is looking across the Restoration now, and sending his words on to an unknown posterity.

“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 were 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