1 (New Haven, 1915), pp. lviii-lix.

2 “Venice and English Political Thought in the Seventeenth Century,” in Modern Philology, xxxviii (1940), 168.

3 Professor Gilbert Chinard in his recent article on “Polybius and the American Constitution” in the Journal of the History of Ideas, i (1940), 38-58, ably expounds the relation of the theory of the mixed state to the checks and balances principle embodied in the Constitution of the United States. I trust that my article in addition to its primary purpose of illuminating the political thought of Milton will have the added value of supplementing Chinard in providing materials for the history of the theory of the mixed state as an idea.

4 I use the term here and elsewhere in this article in the seventeenth century sense in which I have elsewhere defined it. See my article on the subject in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, xl (1941), 482-488.

5 Histories, trans. Evelyn Shuckburgh (London and New York, 1889, 2 vols.), i, 466 ff. See the comments of W. A. Dunning, History of Political Theories, Ancient and Medieval (New York and London, 1902), pp. 115-118.

6 The following passage is a fair statement of his leading ideas: “That statesman [Lycurgus] was fully aware that all those changes which I have enumerated come about by an undeviating law of nature; and reflected that every form of government that was unmixed, and rested on one species of power, was unstable; because it was swiftly perverted into that particular form of evil peculiar to it and inherent in its nature. For just as rust is the natural dissolvent of iron . . . so in each constitution there is naturally engendered a particular vice inseparable from it: in kingship it is absolutism; in aristocracy it is oligarchy; in democracy lawless ferocity and violence; and to these vicious states all these forms of government are, as I have lately shown, inevitably transformed. Lycurgus, I say, saw all this, and accordingly combined together all the excellences and distinctive features of the best constitutions, that no one part should become unduly predominant, and be perverted into its kindred vice; and that, each power being checked by the others, no one part should turn the scale or decisively out-balance the others; but that, by being accurately adjusted and in exact equilibrium, the whole might remain long steady like a ship sailing close to the wind” (i, 466-167).

7 i, 469.

8 Chinard points out that in the opinion of several delegates to the Federal Convention “the executive represented the monarchical power, the Senate the aristocratical, and the House the popular power” (p. 51).

9 i, xxix ff.

10 Lives, trans. Dryden-Clough (New York, n.d.), p. 53.

11 See the comments of J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1928), p. 457.

12 i, ii.

13 Allen, p. 505. It is significant of the influence of Paruta that his Della Perfezione della Vita Politica was translated into French in 1583 and into English by Henry Cary in 1657. His History of Venice was also published in an English translation in 1658.

14 i, vi.

15 Remains (London, 1675), pp. 9-11, 21.

16 Discourses concerning Government, ii, xvi. Cf. Richard Baxter, A Holy Commonwealth, or Political Aphorisms (London, 1659), pp. 87, 207.

17 Oceana, ed. S. B. Liljegren (Heidelberg, 1924), pp. 140, 177, 353, 357, 363.

18 Ibid., p. 13.

19 Ibid., pp. 13-14.

20 Ibid., pp. 32-33. The peculiarly Harringtonian principles of an agrarian law and rotation were means by which this end was to be attained, Harrington being of the opinion that these were necessary to maintain the balance once the equilibrium was set up. “An equall Common-wealth is such an one,” he declared, “as is equall both in the balance or foundation, and in the superstructures, that is to say, in her Agrarian Law and in her Rotation” (p. 32). Hence his remark that he aimed to follow the ancients and yet go his own way (p. 14).

21 i, ii. It was Machiavelli's avowed object in the Discourses to take ancient political wisdom and the great antique examples of mixed government as his guides (Preface).

22 See note 2.

23 The comparison was repeatedly made. Harrington supplies the basis of it in his remark that with the barbarian invasions ancient political institutions of the sort that he extolled were replaced by “ill features of government” brought in by the Huns, Goths, and Saxons in all parts of Europe “except Venice, (which escaping the hands of the Barbarians, by vertue of her impregnable situation, hath her eye fixed upon ancient Prudence: and is attained to a perfection even beyond her copy)” (Oceana, p. 12). See further my Venice, p. 159.

24 Machiavelli, Paruta, and Contarini in Italy, and Raleigh, Lewkenor, Howell, and Harrington in England all give true Polybian descriptions of the Venetian government as a compound of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. See my Venice, pp. 159, 162-163.

25 See my Venice, p. 159; Boccalini, The New-Found Politicke (London, 1627), p. 197; Harrington, Oceana, p. 12. See further Allen, p. 505, and cf. Machiavelli, Discourses, i, ii, v-vi.

26 Venice, p. 158. The idea that whereas the Roman republic lasted only five and the Spartan state eight centuries, Venice had survived for twelve was an important element in the exaltation of Venice over those examples referred to in the preceding note.

27 Venice, p. 162.

28 Significant is Harrington's remark that the excellence of the Venetian government was due, not to the fact that the Venetians were men without sin, but to the fact that their constitution was so contrived as to overcome it. The citizen may be sinful “and yet the commonwealth bee perfect,” and “the Citizen, where the common Wealth is perfect can never commit any such crime, as can render it imperfect or bring it unto a natural dissolution” (Oceana, p. 185). Baxter singled out this idea for attack in the Holy Commonwealth (p. 224). Later, Swift assailed it in The Sentiments of a Church of England Man, contending that governments stood or fell because they were in the hands of good or bad men, not because they were well or ill contrived (sec. ii).

29 Histories, i, 467.

30 Discourses, i, ii.

31 Harrington quotes Machiavelli as saying: “‘Thrice happy is that people which chances to have a man able to give them such a government at once, as without alteration may secure them of their liberties: Seeing that Lacedemon in observing the Lawes of Lycurgus continued about eight hundred yeares without any dangerous tumult or corruption’.” Olphaus Megaletor read this in Machiavelli, Harrington tells us, and concluded that the first essential was that a state should be made all at once (p. 58). Farther down on the same page our author writes: “A Commonwealth is seldome or never well turned or constituted, except it have been the work of one man: for which cause a wise Legislator, and one whose mind is firmely set, not upon private but the publick interest . . . may justly endeavor to get the soveraigne power into his own hands; nor shall any man that is master of reason blame such extraordinary meanes as in that case shall be necessary.” This is a close paraphrase of a passage in Machiavelli's Discourses, i, ix. On p. 59 we find Olphaus Megaletor using the army to secure power to institute Oceana “all at once.” See further the specific comparison of Cromwell and Lycurgus on p. 61.

32 Remains, p. 9. His statement can, I think, be taken as indicative of where he thought the preponderance of power ought to be placed. That it resided in the aristocratic element in ancient Rome was not the common view. In the Discourse of War in General we find Raleigh writing: “Politicians do affirm, that nobility preserves liberty longer than the commons, and for instance say, Solon's popular state came far short of Lycurgus's by mixed government; for the popular state of Athens soon fell, whilst the royal, mixed government of Sparta stood a mighty time; by the nobility Sparta and Venice enjoyed their freedom longer than Rome” (Works [Oxford, 1829, 8 vols.], viii, 296).

33 i, v.

34 It was on the ground of its superiority in this respect that Paruta considered Venice superior to Rome. It was his opinion that the too great power of the people brought about the downfall of the Roman republic. See Allen, p. 505, and cf. Sir Walter Raleigh's opinions above, note 32.

35 Oceana, p. 25.

36 Ibid., p. 18.

37 iii, xxix.

38 Prose Works, ed. Bohn, ii, 408.

39 P. W., ii, 409. The remark about scholastic upstarts is not, of course, to be construed as an attack on learned men in government, which would indeed be a most un-Miltonic thing. “Scholastic” refers to scholastic learning, and has in this passage all the connotations of ignorance and illiteracy which scholasticism suggested to Milton. The charge is that the bishops should have no part in the government because among other things they were ignorant. A few paragraphs below, Milton asserts that for twelve centuries the bishops had been ignorant and illiterate (p. 411). Cf. iii, 87.

40 P. W., i, 154, 170; ii, 23. Milton repeatedly points out that anciently the commons were comprehended in the terms “peers” and “barons” (P. W., i, 167, 175).

41 P. W., i, 16; ii, 266-267; Works, Columbia ed., xviii, 195, 340.

42 See Milton's description of himself as one who had zealously prepared to serve God and his country (P. W., iii, 112-113).

43 Works, xviii, 195.

44 P. W., i, 155. Cf. i, 291. Among the “middle sort” says Milton, “the most prudent men, and most skilful in affairs, are generally found; others are most commonly diverted either by luxury and plenty, or by want and poverty, from virtue, and the study of laws and government.” Cf. Sir Walter Raleigh on “the middle sort of people” in Remains, p. 16.

45 In the First Defense Milton declares that some of the Puritan leaders came from noble ancestry equal to any in the land, and that others had “taken a course to attain to true nobility by their own industry and virtue, and are not inferior to men of the noblest descent” (P. W., i, 16). Milton was at great pains to vindicate the essential nobility and even gentle descent of the Puritan leaders. He tells us in one place that most of the members of Parliament were “either of ancient and high nobility, or at least of known and well-reputed ancestry” (P. W., iii, 145). One basis of Milton's attack on episcopacy was that it raised to positions of influence in the state men of mean and ignoble birth (P. W., iii, 166; cf. ii, 409). What was Milton's attitude toward his own ancestry? In the Second Defense he remarks that he came of honest stock (“genere honesto”) (P. W., i, 254). The anonymous Life of Milton tells us that he was said to be descended from “an ancient knightly family of Buckinghamshire” (The Student's Milton, ed. F. A. Patterson [New York, 1933, rev. ed.], p. xvi). Edward Philips says that Milton was said to be descended from the “ancient family of the Miltons of Milton” (Ibid., p. xxxii).

46 Works, xviii, 175.

47 Cf. Milton's assertion in the Apology jot Smectymnuus that the clergy seek the dissolution of law and the erection of an arbitrary sway (P. W., iii, 163).

48 P. W., ii, 393 f.

49 Significant is Milton's comparison of episcopacy to a wen which should be cut off (P. W., ii, 398).

50 Milton advances as a perfect example of his argument the way in which the bishops of Rome seized more and more power until eventually they made themselves supreme temporal rulers (P. W., ii, 394-395). See also p. 396. On p. 397 he tells us that men have as good reason to fear civil usurpation by the Protestant episcopacy as in former times they had of the papal.

51 Milton rather confusingly uses the term “supremacy of the king,” but by the very theory of mixed government which he explicitly sets forth in the tract (P. W., ii, 403, 408), “supremacy” can mean nothing more than the just powers of the monarch under the law.

52 P. W., ii, 391.

53 That he also got it from Machiavelli is clear. There are repeated references to the Discourses in the Commonplace Book. See Works, xviii, 160, 183, 197, 199, 200, 210, 211, 212, 215, 217.

54 At this point Milton's and Sidney's views are very similar. See Sidney's Discourses, iii, xxxvii. Milton praises Sidney in the Second Defense (P. W., i, 293).

55 P.W., i, 351.

56 P. W., i, 172, 210.

57 The case of Athens in the writings of exponents of the theory of mixed government is an interesting one. Earlier writers like Machiavelli saw Athens as an example of pure democracy and as short-lived and accordingly compared it unfavorably with Sparta and Rome. (Discourses, i, ii), but seventeenth century writers like Sidney contrived to discover that it, too, was a mixed state and admired it as such (Discourses, ii, xvi). There was, therefore, no inconsistency between Milton's acceptance of the theory of mixed government and the admiration for Athens which he expresses (P. W., ii, 136).

58 The great models of the antique world were ever before Milton's eyes, though he was not always willing to admit the fact. In the Areopagitica he urges his countrymen to imitate the “old and elegant humanity of Greece” (P. W., ii, 52). See also the comparison of Vane to a Roman senator in the sonnet addressed to him, and the extraordinary passage in the Second Defense on the likeness of Fairfax to Scipio and the “heroes of antiquity” (P. W., i, 287). See further P. W., i, 88, 117, 219, 297. In The Ready and Easy Way Milton calls on his countrymen not to fail to build Rome anew in the West (P. W., ii, 114). Aubrey says that it was Milton's “being so conversant in Livy and the Roman authors, and the greatness he saw done by the Roman Commonwealth” that made him into a republican (Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark [Oxford, 1898, 2 vols.], ii, 69). Cf. Hobbes's opinion that among his contemporaries one of the chief causes of republicanism was “the reading of the books of policy and histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans” (Leviathan, ii, xxix). Cf. also Harrington, Oceana, p. 10.

59 P. W., i, 15, 88, 160, 167, 172-177, 183, 188.

60 P. W., i, 168, 210, 177. Cf. 205. Harrington set up a flat opposition between classical precedents, which he considered wise and good, and those of the Huns, Goths, Vandals, Lombards, and Saxons, whom he accuses of “deforming the whole face of the world” except Venice with “ill features of government” (Oceana, p. 12).

61 P. W., v, 240, and see my article on the climatic theory in the Modern Language Quarterly, ii (1941), 67-80.

62 P. W., i, 363. Cf. 360-361.

63 P. W., i, 88, 160. The first of these is particularly significant because in it we find him citing Lycurgus as the introducer of mixed government in Sparta and remarking that he had “left a good example” to modern times. In the second passage Sir Thomas Smith is quoted as authority for the statement that a government would not last long unless it was mixed.

64 See Allen's comments, p. 262.

65 Republique, i, i ff. Bodin, of course, did not invent the doctrine of sovereignty. Its origins are doubtless to be found in many previous writers, but it seems clear that he was an important force in giving it currency. There was an English translation of the Republique by T. Knolles as The Six Bookes of a Commonweale (London, 1606).

66 That sovereignty is indivisible was asserted by both Bodin (ii, i) and Hobbes (Leviathan, ii, xix, xxix). That a mixed state was therefore an impossibility was Hobbes's contention (ii, xix).

67 Hobbes, i, xxix.

68 See, for example, Sidney's Discourses, i, xx.

69 J. N. Figgis in his Divine Right of Kings (Cambridge, 1896), pp. 238-243, finds anti-absolutist writers of the seventeenth century confused on the question of sovereignty. It seems to me that he is himself confused, and I regard as wholly inaccurate his statement that “it is the theory of sovereignty which differentiates the royalist writers from the popular side” (p. 246). Whether it is logically defensible to believe at once in indivisible sovereignty, popular sovereignty, and mixed government I do not care to argue, but that such writers as Milton and Sidney did hold these three views without seeing any conflict in them is not debatable. The question at issue between proponents and opponents of the theory of divine right was not whether sovereignty was divisible, but whether by divine or natural law and the custom of nations it resided in the king or in the people. The one idea led straight to absolutism, the other to mixed government.

70 That Milton did not believe in the theory of divided sovereignty is clear from the fact that he repeatedly points out that the whole power of a king is delegated power, that no share of power inheres in a king by divine or any other right simply because he is a king (P. W., ii, 11, 14). Likewise, the power of Parliament was delegated power (P. W., i, 11; ii, 121). I consider myself fully justified, therefore, in seeing in Milton an exponent of indivisible sovereignty. I use the term here and elsewhere in its modern sense. Anyone investigating Milton's views of the matter must look for the thing, not the word. His use of the word is extremely ambiguous. That he was acquainted with it, however, in the sense which it now has is clear from the fact that it is used in that sense and that its meaning is expounded in Sir Walter Raleigh's The Cabinet Council, which Milton published in 1658 (see pp. 2-3).

71 P. W., ii, 8-17; i, 88, 160.

72 P. W., ii, 9 ff.; i, 33, 76; ii, 121.

73 P. W., ii, 14, 121; i, 33.

74 Cf. Milton's position with that of the delegates to the Federal Convention in note 8.

75 P. W., i, 160.

76 P. W., i, 30.

77 P. W., i, 60.

78 P. W., i, 32.

79 P. W., i, 94.

80 P. W., i, 20-21, 114, 156. Cf. Bodin, Republique, i, ii, and Sir Walter Raleigh, Three Discourses (London, 1702), p. 105. The notion of the patriarchal origin of the state was developed at length by Sir Robert Filmer in the Patriarcha (cf. his Observations upon Mr. Hobbes Leviathan, Mr. Milton against Salmasius, and H. Grotius De jure belli et pacis [London, 1652], p. 18), and controverted by Sidney in the Discourses (i, ix, xiii). See also Locke, Essay concerning the True Original of Civil Government, ch. vi. Figgis is correct in saying that though the patriarchal theory is no essential part of the theory of divine right, it affords the best justification of it (p. 148). I am inclined to think, however, that he underestimates the importance of the idea in political thought before Filmer. The theory was, of course, not the only one about the origin of government which was held by advocates of royal supremacy. By the fiction that power once delegated could not be resumed, Hobbes contrived to make the idea of a social contract into an argument for the supremacy of the ruler, however the ruler was conceived (Leviathan, i, xiv; ii, xviii).

81 P. W., i, 42, 43, 46, 47, 76.

82 P. W., i, 35 ff.

83 P. W., i, 108-116.

84 Cf. Filmer's Anarchy of a Limited and Mixed Monarchy (1648).

85 To prove the point he quotes Aristotle (P. W., i, 37-38, 160) and Sir Thomas Smith (i, 160; cf. Works, xviii, 176) and denies that even the kings in Oriental despotisms had absolute power (P. W., i, 37).

86 P. W., i, 88, 160.

87 P. W., i, 33, 79, 88. Cf. i, 223, 249; ii, 130.

88 Works, xviii, 199.

89 P. W., i, 114. Cf. 38-39.

90 Gooch's remarks on Milton's transition to republicanism are interesting (The History of English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century [Cambridge, 1898], pp. 180-183). He sees the Eikonoklastes as the key document, and such it undoubtedly is as far as overt expressions of republicanism are concerned (P. W., i, 482, 485).

91 P. W., i, 33.

92 P. W., i, 15.

93 P. W., ii, 121. Note the similarities in phrasing between the two passages.

94 The Ready and Easy Way is clear on this point. So great was Milton's distrust of all single-person magistracies that he would tolerate not even a powerless “duke of Venice” (see my Venice, p. 167). See Clark's remarks (p. xxxv) and Gooch's acute observations (p. 244).

95 Such a period was 1647-48, when he accused the Presbyterians of having brought the great reformation to “ridiculous frustration” (P. W., v, 236 ff.).

96 P. W., ii, 408-409.

97 I say at its height because there is no other tract in which he puts his hopes as completely in Cromwell as in the Second Defense. Cf. P. W., i, 288-289 with the views expressed in the First Defense (i, 15). That his faith even at its height involved fears and reservations is, of course, clear from the warnings to Cromwell (i, 290 f.).

98 P. W., i, 294-295. The statement occurs near the end of the tract and was clearly written after the establishment of the Protectorate.

99 P. W., ii, 429.

100 That Lycurgus made a strong impression on Milton is attested by his numerous references to him. See especially P. W., ii, 57, and i, 88, where Lycurgus is held up as having set a pattern for others to follow.

101 P. W., ii, 98.

102 On these matters see my article referred to in note 4.

103 P. W., i, 288, 289.

104 Masson, Life, iv, 520 ff.

105 See the Letter in Masson, iv, 521.

106 P. W., i, 290 ff.

107 P. W., i, 297.

108 What I am suggesting, of course, is that in this respect Harrington and Milton, both under the influence of the theory of the mixed state and with the Lycurgean example before them, saw Cromwell in much the same way.

109 P. W., i, 289.

110 It is, I think, indicative of the hold of the idea of a councilar magistracy in a normally functioning state on Milton that he would have even Cromwell in his role of transitional dictator associate with himself the great leaders on the Puritan side (P. W., i, 290).

111 P. W., iii, 520.

112 P. W., ii, 106 ff.

113 P. W., ii, 108. The evidence is clear that Milton was not adverse to using armed force to attain the free commonwealth. He had earlier specifically defended it in the First Defense (P. W., i, 25). The notion was not uncommon with other commonwealth planners. Harrington represents Olphaus Megaletor as using the army in getting himself appointed Archon (Oceana, p. 59).

114 Milton would have seen no inconsistency between his doctrine of popular sovereignty and the notion of a great leader's instituting an ideal state by force inasmuch as he obviously thought of the better part of the people, whom, as we shall see, he saw standing for the whole people, as consenting to the acts of the institutor (P. W., ii, 108).

115 It is characteristic of Milton as a political reformer that he did not distinguish early enough and clearly enough the differences between his own aims and those of the persons he supported. When this was not the case, he harbored the illusion that they could be brought to see the truth his way. Hence the Areopagitica. The result was a series of disappointments.

116 P. W., i, 88, 111, 265, 288; ii, 125; v, 240.

117 P. W., v, 240.

118 P. W., i, 111, 265, 288.

119 P. W., ii, 408.

120 P. W., iii, 176, 278. Cf. 144, 319.

121 P. W., ii, 11.

122 P. W., i, 363, 398. See also the statement on p. 401 that “the parliament, therefore, without any usurpation, hath had it always in their power to limit and confine the exorbitancy of kings, whether they call it their will, their reason, or their conscience.”

123 P. W., i, 398. Cf. ii, 121.

124 P. W., ii, 187.

125 P. W., i, 180. For an anticipation of this view in the Tetrachordon see P. W., iii, 315, where Milton asserts that it was Parliament that first put the sceptre into the hands of an English king. In the Second Defense, on the other hand, he seems to revert momentarily to the notion of Parliament having been created as a check on the monarch (P. W., i, 264). Doubtless he had no profound conviction of the historical truth of either theory and to some extent used whichever one served his purpose best.

126 P. W., i, 180. Cf. 15.

127 P. W., ii, 121.

128 P. W., i, 88, 160, 363; ii, 115, 125.

129 Probably the most influential exposition of the Venetian government in England was that by Contarini, which Lewkenor translated in 1599 as The Commonwealth and Government of Venice. Contarini describes Venice as a mixed state in which the doge and his councillors represented the princely element, the Grand Council or assembly of all the citizens the democratic element, and the Senate and the Council of Ten the aristocratic element (p. 65). All writers agree that of these the aristocratic element was dominant, and an examination of the system proves the point beyond question. It might indeed be said that the whole Venetian system was built on a distrust of popular procedures on the one hand, and of strong executive power in the hands of either a single man or a small council on the other; that is, both had their role to play, the state being mixed, but neither was to have too much power. The doge, it is true, was elected in the Grand Council, but by a complicated system of successive winnowings the purpose of which, as Contarini frankly says, was to throw the choice into the hands of the wisest and most virtuous, that is, the same persons whom he saw as comprising the Senate, which was with the Ten the aristocratic element of the state (p. 56). All sorts of devices were used to weaken the magistracy and insure the dominance of the Senate. The doge was powerless to act without the presence of a majority of his six councillors and these were changed every eight months. Even when together they could decide only minor matters on their own authority. The College of Sages or Preconsultors, which sat with the ducal council, was a mere committee of the Senate without any final authority whatsoever. Most matters of importance were first considered by the College and then submitted to the Senate, which settled them finally. The Council of Ten assured the dominance of the aristrocratic element in times of crisis. See Contarini, p. 68.

130 P. W., iii, 105, 145-150, 179, 281, 287, 315, 316, 321.

131 1647 or 1648. See Sir Charles Firth, Essays, Historical and Literary, ed. Godfrey Davies (Oxford, 1938), pp. 64, 95.

132 Most of the parliamentarians, he tells us, had got their places by wealth or ambition rather than by merit. They had pursued private profit, delayed and denied justice, determined matters by spite and favoritism, and been guilty of treachery, oppression, and unjust taxation. “Some who had been called from shops and warehouses, without other merit, to be set in supreme councils and committees, (as their breeding was,) fell to huckster the commonwealth.” The crowning charge, and an ironical one indeed in view of the position at which Milton arrived a few years later, is that they had deliberately fomented “troubles and combustions” in order to perpetuate themselves in power (P. W., v, 236-238).

133 P. W., v, 240. See my article on this subject in the Modern Language Quarterly, ii (1941), 67-80.

134 P. W., i, 361, 363, 367, 401, 402.

135 P. W., i, 15.

136 P. W., ii, 23. Cf. i, 175.

137 P. W., i, 365.

138 P. W., i, 176, 190.

139 P. W., ii, 121, Cf. 120.

140 P. W., i, 288.

141 P. W., i, 264-265.

142 P. W., ii, 122. In the Eikonoklastes Milton had supported the Triennial Bill and even had sought to show that not triennial, but annual, parliaments represented the true old English custom (P. W., i, 351 ff.). That he still retained something of this older view and did not see clearly in 1654 the direction in which his thought was developing may be surmised from the charge of “artful procrastination” which he hurled at the Rump in the Second Defense (P. W., i, 288).

143 P. W., i, 297-298.

144 P. W., ii, 126.

145 P. W., i, 167.

146 The change is proposed no fewer than three times: in the Proposalls for a Firme Government (Works, xviii, 4); in The Ready and Easy Way (P. W., ii, 127); and in the Letter to Monk (P. W., ii, 107).

147 See my Venice, pp. 165 ff.

148 P. W., i, 351 ff.

149 P. W., i, 172, 210.

150 P. W., i, 121-124. See further Proposalls for a Firme Government (Works, xviii, 1 ff.). Milton also cites the examples of the Sanhedrin and the United Provinces, which exponents of the mixed state saw as embodying the same principles as those of Greece and Rome. Harrington, for example, declared that the Hebrews got the secret of the mixed state from God and the Greeks and Romans from nature (Oceana, p. 12). This was, of course, for this writer one more way of saying that the law of God and the law of nature led straight to mixed government, and it explains his citation of the Sanhedrin along with classical, Venetian, and other models. Milton certainly believed that mixed government had its basis in the law of God and the law of nature, and in the First Defense, in replying to Salmasius, who had brought the matter up, he had cited the ancient Hebrew state to show that in it, no more than in other antique models was the magistracy supreme, but I do not find him making any such specific identification of the Hebrew state with Greek and Roman conceptions of mixed government as Harrington makes. That this was, however, an implication of his position is clear, and we need not, therefore, be surprised at seeing the Sanhedrin appear with other models in The Ready and Easy Way. See P. W., i, 33, 44-45.

151 P. W., ii, 408.

152 P. W., iii, 154-155.

153 P. W., ii, 81.

154 P. W., iii, 94.

155 P. W., iii, 173.

156 P. W., ii, 3. Cf. 77.

157 P. W., i, 309, 313, 314, 317.

158 P. W., i, 322, 361.

159 P. W., i, 351.

160 P. W., i, 313.

161 P. W., i, 154. Cf. 155.

162 Hence the various justifications of decisions by a virtuous minority of the people until or unless a majority could be brought to virtue by a proper government and a proper educational system (P. W., ii, 112, 132). Cf. the Second Defense (P. W., i, 265).

163 P. W., i, 154.

164 P. W., i, 297.

165 P. W., ii, 126. See also the Letter to Monk (P. W., ii, 107).

166 P. W., ii, 126.

167 P. W., ii, 118, 121, 123.

168 P. W., ii, 121.

169 P. W., ii, 126, 135.

170 P. W., ii, 107, 135.

171 Milton seems to have envisioned a standing militia of the “well-affected” as a guaranty against the seizure of tyrannical power by the Grand Council (P. W., ii, 123), and he refers to other limitations on p. 127. In the Letter to Monk he says that though the supreme council would be perpetual, its power would be so limited and the people would have so much authority remaining in their hands that there would be no possibility of the Grand Council establishing a tyranny (P. W., ii, 107).

172 P. W., ii, 121.

173 P. W., ii, 125.

174 See my Venice, p. 158. In this fact, I think, is to be found one explanation for the emergence of Venice as a model in Milton's mind and the real significance it came to have for him in 1659-60. It will be recognized, I trust, that the present article and my article on Venice support and confirm each other.

175 P. W., ii, 124-125.

175a In 1581 the population of Venice was 134,890, of whom 1843 were adult citizens and 4309 were women and children of citizens' families (J. A. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy, Modern Library ed., i, 100). It is doubtless to be assumed that Milton thought of the virtuous in England as being proportionately far more numerous than the Venetian citizens, but that of course does not alter my point that in each case the democratic element was a minority.

176 P. W., ii, 126.

177 See the Letter to Monk (P. W., ii, 108).

178 P. W., ii, 115, 125. The second of these passages, with its insistence on balance as the grand secret in government, is especially significant. The term Milton uses to describe his free commonwealth is “equal,” a favorite expression with proponents of mixed government to express the balance or stability which such a state was supposed to have. See Milton's own earlier use of the term in discussing the mixed government of England (P. W., ii, 408), and cf. Harrington's use of it in Oceana (p. 33).

179 P. W., ii, 113, 121, 124, 127. As I have pointed out, the idea of a perpetually healthy state was by no means peculiar to Milton at this time, for it appears also in Harrington's Oceana. Various seventeenth century writers speculated on the possibility that Venice was so perfectly contrived that it might last forever. Thuanus had predicted that such would be the case, Harrington called the republic an “immortal Commonwealth,” and the Venetians themselves appear to have entertained the notion (Paolo Sarpi, The Maxims of the Government of Venice [London, 1707], pp. 2-4). It was indeed contemporary notions about Venice which were responsible, I think, for the attempt to construct a perpetual state in both Harrington and Milton. See my Venice, pp. 158 ff.

180 P. W., v, 308.

181 Milton retained in 1660 exactly the notion of 1641: that members of the Grand Council should be chosen from those among the “nobility and chief gentry” who had proved their wisdom and virtue and who constituted, therefore, the true aristocracy of the land (P. W., ii, 135). Hence, as in 1641, the Grand Council would represent the whole people (the better part), but it would also in Milton's own peculiar way represent what was in effect an aristocracy within an aristocracy of virtue.

182 P. W., ii, 122-123, 127-128. These and other differences of opinion, even though they are important, should not be permitted to obscure the larger similarities in the thought of the two men. Both aimed at a perpetual state and an “equal” state; that they differed on the means of attaining these ends no one, of course, would deny.

183 Harrington's Rota Club followers made strenuous efforts to secure the adoption of his ideas. See my Venice, p. 161.

184 In the Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions between the Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome, ch. 1.

185 See note 3.