desire a patron or a friend more able, more zealous, or more eloquent. No menace could divert him from his purpose! no intimidation on the one hand, and no promise of emolument or promotion on the other, could alter the serenity of his countenance, or shake the firmness of his soul. By these virtues, which endeared him to his friends, and commanded the respect even of his enemies, he, sir, has acquired a name which, while you and such as you are mouldering in oblivion, will flourish in every age, and in every country in the world."*

The title of the treatise now under notice is as follows:"The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates: proving that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any, who have the power, to call to account a tyrant, or wicked king, and, after due conviction, to depose, and put him to death, if the ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied to do it. And that they who of late so much blame deposing, are the men that did it themselves." Milton commences with laying down what are the true moral principles with relation to political tyranny, affirming that " none can love freedom heartily but good men ;† the rest love not freedom, but licence, which never hath more scope or more indulgence than under tyrants;" and, with pointed reference to the presbyterian apostacy, he adds, " And although sometimes for shame, and when it comes to their own grievances, of purse especially, they would seem good patriots, and side with the better cause, yet when others, for the deliverance of their country endued with fortitude and heroie

* Prose Works, vol. i., pp. 267, 268.

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+ Robert Hall, in his sermon on the death of Dr. Ryland, observes that it has been alleged against the Christian religion, that it does not prescribe the duties of patriotism and friendship; but argues, in reply, that it supplies the only system of morals from which those virtues can result. With respect to friendship, Cicero affirmed, in his treatise "De Amicitiâ," that it could only subsist between virtuous men ; and Milton here maintains that general moral excellence must engender that sentiment which alone deserves the name of patriotism.

virtue to fear nothing but the curse written against those 'that do the work of the Lord negligently,' would go on to remove, not only the calamities and thraldoms of a people, but the roots and causes whence they spring; straight these men, and sure helpers at need, as if they hated only the miseries, but not the mischiefs, after they have juggled and paltered with the world, bandied and borne arms against their king, divested him, disanointed him, nay, cursed him all over in their pulpits, and their pamphlets, to the engaging of sincere and real men beyond what is possible or honest to retreat from, not only turn revolters from those principles, which only could at first move them, but lay the strain of disloyalty, and worse, on those proceedings which are the necessary consequences of their own former actions; nor disliked by themselves, were they managed to the entire advantages of their own faction; not considering the while that he toward whom they boasted their new fidelity, counted them accessory; and by those statutes and laws, which they so impotently brandish against others, would have doomed them to a traitor's death for what they have done already."*

* Mr. St. John, in his edition of the prose works of Milton, makes the following comment upon this passage:-" Dr. Zachary Grey, the learned, but partial and prejudiced editor of Hudibras, has, with the diligence of one who performs a labour of love, scraped together in his notes everything the paltry literature of the Restoration could supply against the preachers and soldiers of the Commonwealth. He, however, corroborates Milton's charge against the Presbyterians, of having at the outset preached a crusade against royalty; but is far from joining with the poet in reprehending their backwardness to 'fight it out, mordicus-to death.' 'The Presbyterians (many of whom, before the war, had got, he observes, into parish churches) preached the people into rebellion; incited them to take up arms and fight the Lord's battles, and destroy the Amalekites, root and branch, hip and thigh, and to root out the wicked from the earth; that was, in their sense, all that loved the king, the bishops, and the common prayer.' 'It has been fully made out, that many of the regicides were drawn into the grand rebellion by the direful imprecations of seditious

Milton now subjects the meanness and tergiversation of the presbyterians to an unsparing exposure, showing that they reversed their policy from purely selfish motives; that they were tainted at heart with the same spiritual despotism under which they had themselves suffered; and that they were seeking to profit by a political transition, in order to establish themselves in the place vacated by the frustrated faction of prelacy. He then addresses himself to the ethical part of his subject, in the following passage:-" But who in particular is a tyrant, cannot be determined in a general discourse, otherwise than by supposition; his particular charge, and the sufficient proof of it, must determine that : which I leave to magistrates, at least to the uprighter sort of them, and of the people, though in number less by many, in whom faction least hath prevailed above the law of nature and right reason, to judge as they find cause. But this I dare own as part of my faith, that if such a one there be, by whose commission whole massacres have been committed on his faithful subjects, his provinces offered to pawn or alienation, as the hire of those whom he had solicited to come in and destroy whole cities and countries; be he king, or tyrant, or emperor, the sword of justice is above him; in whose hand soever is found sufficient power to avenge the effusion and so great a deluge of innocent blood. For if all human power to execute, not accidentally, but intendedly, the wrath of God upon evil-doers, without exception, be of God; then that power, whether ordinary, or, if that fail, extraordinary, so executing that intent of God, is lawful, preachers from the pulpit.' Dr. South relates that he had it from the mouth of Axtell the regicide, that he, with many more, went into that execrable war with such a controlling horror upon their spirits from those public sermons, especially of Brooks and Calamy, that they verily believed they should have been accursed of God for ever if they had not acted their part in the dismal tragedy, and heartily done the devil's work.'-(Sermons, i. 513.) He adds, that it was the pulpit that supplied the field with swordsmen, and the parliament. house with incendiaries.""

and not to be resisted. But to unfold more at large this whole question, though with all expedient brevity, I shall here set down, from first beginning, the original of kings; how and wherefore exalted to that dignity above their brethren; and from thence shall prove, that, turning to tyranny, they may be as lawfully deposed and punished, as they were at first elected: this I shall do by authorities and reasons, not learnt in corners among schisms and heresies, as our doubling divines are ready to calumniate, but fetched out of the midst of choicest and most authentic learning, and no prohibited authors; nor many heathen, but Mosaical, Christian, orthodoxal, and, which must needs be more convincing to our adversaries, presbyterial.”*

In pursuance of this purpose, he first presents a brief but philosophical history of political constitutions, and deduces from it the following conclusions:-First, that the power of kings and magistrates is only derivative-transferred and committed to them by the people, in trust for the common good of the entire community, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and from whom it cannot be alienated without a violation of their natural birthright; and consequently that such titles as sovereign lord, natural lord, and the like, are "either arrogancies or flatteries." Secondly, "that to say, as is usual, the king hath as good right to his crown and dignity as any man to his inheritance, is to make the subject no better than the king's slave, his chattel, or his possession that may be bought and sold: and doubtless, if hereditary title were sufficiently inquired, the best foundation of it would be found but either in courtesy or convenience. But suppose it to be of right hereditary, what can be more just and legal, if a subject for certain crimes be to forfeit by law from himself and posterity all his inheritance to the king, than that a king, for crimes proportional, should forfeit all his title and inheritance to the people? Unless the people must be thought created all * Prose Works, vol. ii., pp. 7, 8.

for him, he not for them, and they all in one body inferior to him single; which were a kind of treason against the dignity of mankind to affirm. Thirdly, it follows, that to say kings are accountable to none but God, is the overturning of all law and government. For if they may refuse to give account, then all covenants made with them at coronation, all oaths are in vain, and mere mockeries; all laws which they swear to keep, made to no purpose: for if the king fear not God, (as how many of them do not,) we hold then our lives and estates by the tenure of his mere grace and mercy, as from a god, not a mortal magistrate; a position that none but court parasites or men besotted would maintain!"*

This position Milton fortifies by references to ancient history, both sacred and profane, and adds:-" It follows, lastly, that since the king or magistrate holds his authority of the people, both originally and naturally for their good, in the first place, and not his own, then may the people, as oft as they shall judge it for the best, either choose him or reject him, retain him or depose him, though no tyrant, merely by the liberty and right of freeborn men to be governed as seems to them best." This he supports by numerous passages both from the Old and New Testaments.

He next shows that the sacred writers, in prescribing the duty of civil subordination, at the same time define the power to which such obedience is due, namely, those who are a terror only to evil-doers, and a protection and encouragement to those that do well; and adds, "If such only be mentioned here as powers to be obeyed, and our submission to them only required, then doubtless those powers that do the contrary are no powers ordained of God; and by consequence no obligation laid upon us to obey, or not to resist them. And it may be well observed, that both these apostles, whenever they give this precept, express it in terms not concrete, but abstract, as logicians are wont to * Prose Works, vol. ii., pp. 12, 13.