such a witless, senseless bawler, one that was born but to spoil or transcribe good authors, should think himself able to write anything of his own, that will reach posterity, whom, together with his frivolous scribbles, the very next age will bury in oblivion; unless this defence of the king perhaps may be beholden to the answer I give to it, for being looked into now and then. And I would entreat the illustrious states of Holland, to take off their prohibition, and suffer the book to be publicly sold. For when I have detected the vanity, ignorance, and falsehood that it is full of, the farther it spreads the more effectually it will be suppressed. Now let us hear how he convicts.

us.

DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.

CHAPTER I.

66

I PERSUADE myself, Salmasius, that you being a vain flashy man, are not a little proud of being the king of Great Britain's defender, who himself was styled the "Defender of the Faith." For my part, I think you deserve your titles both alike; for the king defended the faith, and you have defended him, so that, betwixt you, you have spoiled both your causes: which I shall make appear throughout the whole ensuing discourse, and particularly in this very chapter. You told us in the 12th page of your preface, that so good and so just a cause ought not to be embellished with any flourishes of rhetoric; that the king needed no other defence than by a bare narrative of his story:" and yet in your first chapter, in which you had promised us that bare narrative, you neither tell the story right, nor do you abstain from making use of all the skill you have in rhetoric to set it off. So that, if we must take your own judgment, we must believe the king's cause to be neither good nor just. But by the way, I would advise you not to have so good an opinion of yourself (for nobody else has so of you) as to imagine that you are able to speak well upon any subject, who can neither play the part of an orator, nor an histo

rian, nor express yourself in a style that would not be ridiculous even in a lawyer; but, like a mountebank's juggler, with big swelling words in your preface, you raised our expectation, as if some mighty matter were to ensue; in which your design was not so much to introduce a true narrative of the king's story, as to make your own empty intended flourishes go off the better. For "being now about to give us an account of the matter of fact, you find yourself encompassed and affrighted with so many monsters of novelty, that you are at a loss what to say first, what next, and what last of all." I will tell you what the matter is with you. In the first place, you find yourself affrighted and astonished at your own monstrous lies; and then you find that empty head of yours not encompassed, but carried round, with so many trifles and fooleries, that you not only now do not, but never did, know what was fit to be spoken, and in what method. "Among the many difficulties that you find in expressing the heinousness of so incredible a piece of impiety, this one offers itself," you say, which is easily said, and must often be repeated; to wit," that the sun itself never beheld a more outrageous action." But by your good leave, sir, the sun has beheld many things that blind Bernard never saw. But we are content you should mention the sun over and over. And it will be a piece of prudence in you so to do. For though our wickedness does not require it, the coldness of the defence that you are making does. "The original of kings," you say, "is as ancient as that of the sun." May the gods and goddesses, Damasippus, bless thee with an everlasting solstice; that thou mayest always be warm, thou that canst not stir a foot without the sun. Perhaps you would avoid the imputation of being called a doctor Umbraticus. But, alas! you are in perfect darkness, that make no difference betwixt a paternal power, and a regal; and that when you had called kings fathers of their country, could fancy that with that metaphor you had persuaded us, that whatever is applicable to a father, is so to a king. Alas! there is a great difference betwixt them. Our fathers begot us. Our king made not us, but we him. Nature has given fathers to us all, but we ourselves appointed our own king.

So that the people is not for the king, but the king for them. "We bear with a father, though he be harsh and severe;" and so we do with a king. But we do not bear with a father, if he be a tyrant. If a father murder his son, he himself must die for it; and why should not a king be subject to the same law, which certainly is a most just one? especially considering that a father cannot by any possibility divest himself of that relation, but a king may easily make himself neither king nor father of his people. If this action of ours be considered according to its quality, as you call it, I, who am both an Englishman born, and was an eye-witness of the transactions of these times, tell you, who are both a foreigner and an utter stranger to our affairs, that we have put to death neither a good, nor a just, nor a merciful, nor a devout, nor a godly, nor a peaceable king, as you style him; but an enemy, that has been so to us almost ten years to an end; nor one that was a father, but a destroyer to his country. You confess, that such things have been practised; for yourself have not the impudence to deny it; but not by protestants upon a protestant king. As if he deserved the name of a protestant, that, in a letter to the pope, could give him the title of most holy father; that was always more favourable to the papists than to those of his own profession. And being such, he is not the first of his own family, that has been put to death by protestants. Was not his grandmother* deposed and banished, and at last beheaded by protestants? And *Mary Queen of Scots, whom the Puritans, of course, regarded with abhorrence, both on account of the irregularities and crimes of her private life, and for the sake of her religion. It is to be regretted that Milton should have thought it worth while to notice, as he does, in this early part of his work, the puerile objections of Salmatius. The temptation to a scholar, and a complete master of the subject under consideration, was unquestionably great. In all such cases it is desirable, as Bayle observes, to have the laughers on our side; and Milton was sufficiently well acquainted with his contemporaries to know how to carry them along with him, particularly those who had a keen sense of the ridiculous. It was for them that he condescended to worry the continental sophist, and the extraordinary success of his work shows that he did not miss his aim; but we live at too great a distance from those times, and are too little affected by the influences then in operation, to relish many things which they would have thought excellent. However, though a part of the Defence was written exclusively for Milton's contemporaries, by much the

were not her own countrymen, that were protestants too, well enough pleased with it? Nay, if I should say they were parties to it, I should not lie. But there being so few protestant kings, it is no great wonder if it never happened that one of them has been put to death. But that it is lawful to depose a tyrant, and to punish him according to his deserts; nay, that this is the opinion of very eminent divines, and of such as have been most instrumental in the late reformation, do you deny it if you dare. You confess, that many kings have come to an unnatural death; some by the sword, some poisoned, some strangled, and some in a dungeon; but for a king to be arraigned in a court of judicature, to be put to plead for his life, to have sentence of death pronounced against him, and that sentence executed; this you think a more lamentable instance than all the rest, and make it a prodigious piece of impiety. Tell me, thou superlative fool, whether it be not more just, more agreeable to the rules of humanity, and the laws of all human societies, to bring a criminal, be his offence what it will, before a court of justice, to give him leave to speak for himself; and, if the law condemn him, then to put him to death as he has deserved, so as he may have time to repent or to recollect himself; than presently, as soon as ever he is taken, to butcher him without more ado? Do you think there is a malefactor in the world, that if he might have his choice, would not choose to be thus dealt withal? And if this sort of proceeding against a private person be accounted the fairer of the two, why should it not be counted so against a prince? Nay, why should we not think, that himself liked it better? You would have had him killed privately, and none to have seen it, either that future ages might have lost the advantage of so good an example; or that they that did this glorious action, might seem to have avoided the light, and to have acted contrary to law and justice. You aggravate the matter by telling us, that it was not done in an uproar, or brought about by any faction amongst great men, or in the heat of a rebellion, either of the people or the soldiers: that there was no hatred, no larger portion is addressed to the men of all ages and countries who love liberty, and would willingly make sacrifices to obtain it.-ED.

fear, no ambition, no blind precipitate rashness in the case; but that it was long consulted on, and done with deliberation. You did well in leaving off being an Advocate, and turn grammarian, who from the accidents and circumstances of a thing, which in themselves considered sway neither one way nor other, argue in dispraise of it, before you have proved the thing itself to be either good or bad. See how open you lie: if the action you are discoursing of be commendable and praiseworthy, they that did it deserve the greater honour, in that they were prepossessed with no passions, but did what they did for virtue's sake. If there were great difficulty in the enterprise, they did well in not going about it rashly, but upon advice and consideration. Though for my own part, when I call to mind with how unexpected an importunity and fervency of mind, and with how unanimous a consent, the whole army, and a great part of the people from almost every county in the kingdom, cried out with one voice for justice against the king, as being the sole author of all their calamities, I cannot but think, that these things were brought about by a divine impulse. Whatever the matter was, whether we consider the magistrates, or the body of the people, no men ever undertook with more courage, and, which our adversaries themselves confess, in a more sedate temper of mind, so brave an action; an action that might have become those famous heroes, of whom we read in former ages; an action, by which they ennobled not only laws, and their execution, which seem for the future equally restored to high and low against one another; but even justice, and to have rendered it, after so signal a judgment, more illustrious and greater than in its own self. We are now come to an end of the 3rd page of the first book, and have not the bare narrative he promised us yet. He complains that our principles are, that a king, whose government is burdensome and odious, may lawfully be deposed: and " by this doctrine," says he," if they had had a king a thousand times better than they ha', they would not have spared his life." Observe the man's subtle way of arguing; for I would willingly be informed what consequence there is in this, unless he allows, that a

Salamasius was once an advocate, that is, a counsellor at law.