Singularity of Government, Part Two

"Can the folly be paralled, to adore and be the slaves of a single person for doing that which it is ten thousand to one whether he can or will do, and we without him might do more easily, more effectually, more laudably ourselves?"
John Milton
The Ready and Easy Way
1660

Limitations of Parliament

"For it is only the king's right, he will say, to call a parliament; and this he will do most commonly about his own affairs rather than the kingdom's, as will appear plainly so soon as they are called. For what will their business then be, and the chief expense of their time, but an endless tugging between petition of right and royal prerogative, especially about the negative voice, militia, or subsidies, demanded and ofttimes extorted without reasonable cause appearing to the commons, who are the only true representatives of the people and their liberty, but will be then mingled with a court faction."
John Milton
The Ready and Easy Way
1660

Intermediation of Elections

"Another way will be to well qualify and refine elections, not committing all to the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but permitting only those of them who are rightly qualified to nominate as many as they will; and out of that number others of a better breeding to choose a less number judiciously, till after a third or fourth sifting and refining of exactest choice, they only be left chosen who are the due number and seem by most voices the worthiest."
John Milton
The Ready and Easy Way
1660

Popular Assemblies

"So that the main reason urged why popular assemblies are to be trusted with the people's liberty, rather than a senate of principal men, because great men will be still endeavoring to enlarge their power, but the common sort will be contented to maintain their own liberty, is by experience found false, none being more ambitious to amplify their power than such popularities; which was seen in the people of Rome, who, at first contented to have their tribunes, at length contended with the senate that one consul, then both--soon after, that the censors and praetors also--should be created plebian, and the whole empire put into their hands; adoring lastly those who were most averse to the senate; till Marius, by fulfilling all their inordinate desires, quite lost them all the power for which they had so long been striving, and left them under the tyranny of Sulla."
John Milton
The Ready and Easy Way
1660

Singular Government

"And what madness is it for them who might manage nobly their own affairs themselves, sluggishly and weakly to devolve all on a single person; and, more like boys under age than men, to commit all to his patronage and disposal who neither can perform what he undertakes, and yet for undertaking it, though royally paid, will not be their servant, but their lord!"
John Milton
The Ready and Easy Way
1660

Accountability of Governors

"Nay, it is well and happy for the people if their king be but a cipher, being ofttimes a mischief, a pest, a scourge of the nation, and, which is worse, not to be removed, not to be controlled (much less accused or brought to punishment) without the danger of a common ruin, without the shaking and almost subversion of the whole land: whereas in a free commonwealth, any governor or chief counsellor offending may be removed and punished without the least commotion."
John Milton
The Ready and Easy Way
1660

Punishment of Kings

"God in much displeasure gave a king to the Israelites, and imputed it a sin to them that they sought one, but Christ apparently forbids his disciples to admit of any such heathenish government. 'The kings of the Gentiles,'saith he,'exercise lordship over them,' and they that 'exercise authority upon them are called benefactors: but ye shall not be so; but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that serveth.'"
John Milton
The Ready and Easy Way
1660

Education and Talent

"If others hence will pretend to disturb all counsels, what is that to them who pretend not, but are in real danger--not they only so judging, but a great, though not the greatest, number of their chosen patriots, who might be more in weight than the others in number: there being in number little virtue, but by weight and measure wisdom working all things, and the dangers on either side they seriously thus weighed. . ."
John Milton
The Ready and Easy Way
1660

Unfit for Government

"It is also sanctioned by the dictates of justice and by the constitution of nature that he, who from the imbecility or derangement of his intellect is incapable of governing himself, should, like a minor, be committed to the government of another, and least of all should he be appointed to superintend the affairs of others or the interest of the state."
John Milton
Second Defense of the English People
1654

Worthy Officials

"Are they fit to be the legislators of a whole people who themselves know not what law, what reason, what right and wrong, what crooked and straight, what licit and illicit means? who think that all power consists in outrage, all dignity in the parade of insolence? who neglect every other consideration for the corrupt gratification of their friendships or the prosecution of their resentments? who disperse their own relations and creatures through the provinces for the sake of levying taxes and confiscating goods--men, for the greater part the most profligate and vile, who buy up for themselves what they pretend to expose to sale, who thence collect and exorbitant mass of wealth, which they fraudulently divert from the public service, who thus spread their pillage through the country and in a moment emerge from penury and rags to a state of splendor and wealth?"
John Milton
Second Defense of the English People
1654

Venality

"For who would vindicate your right of unrestrained sufferage or of choosing what representatives you liked best, merely that you might elect the creatures of your own faction, whoever they might be, or him, however small might be his worth, who would give you the most lavish feasts and enable you to drink to the greatest excess?"
John Milton
Second Defense of the English People
1654

Virtue in Government, Part Two

"And unless that liberty which is of such a kind as arms can neither procure or take away, which alone is the fruit of piety, of justice, of temperance, and unadulterated virtue, shall have taken deep root in your minds and hearts, there will not long be wanting one who will snatch from you by treachery what you have acquired by arms."
John Milton
Second Defense of the English People
1654

Cromwell

"They were a stay to the good, a terror to the evil, and the warmest advocates for every exertion of piety and virtue."
John Milton
Second Defense of the English People
1654

Tyrannicide, Part Three

"He therefore who would authorize the destruction of tyrants does not authorize the destruction of kings, but of the most inveterate enemies to kings."
John Milton
Second Defense of the English People
1654

Tyrannicide, Part Two

"Let them show us then why the same law may not justify much more a state or whole people, to do justice upon him against whom each private man may lawfully defend himself; seeing all kind of justice done is a defense to all good men, as well as a punishment to bad, and justice done upon a tyrant is no more but the necessary self-defense of a whole commonwealth. To war upon a king that his instruments may be brought to condign punishment, and thereafter to punish them the instruments, and not to spare only, but to defend and honor him the author, is the strangest piece of justice to be called Christian, and the strangest piece of reason to be called human, that by men of reverence and learning, as their style imports them, ever yet was vented. They maintain in the third and fourth section that a judge or inferior magistrate is anointed of God, is his minister, hath the sword in his hand, is to be obeyed by St. Peter's rule, as well as the supreme, and without difference anywhere expressed: and yet will have us fight against the supreme till he remove and punish the inferior magistrate (for such were greatest delinquents); whenas by scripture and reason there can be no more authority be shown to resist the one than the other; and altogether as much to punish or depose the supreme himself as to make war upon him till he punish or deliver up his inferior magistrates, whom in the same terms we are commanded to obey and not to resist."
Christopher Goodman
Of Obedience

Tyrannicide

"Whence doubtless our ancestors, who were not ignorant with what rights either nature or ancient constitution had endowed them, when oaths both at coronation and renewed in parliament would not serve, thought it no way illegal to depose and put to death their tyrannous kings. Insomuch that the parliament drew up a charge against Richard the Second, and the commons requested to have judgment decreed against him that the realm might not be endangered."
John Milton
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
1649

Commonality

"Nor is it distance of place that makes enmity, but enmity that makes distance. He, therefore, that keeps peace with me, near or remote, of whatsoever nation, is to me, as far as all civil and human offices, and Englishman and a neighbor. But if an Englishman, forgetting all laws, human, civil, and religious, offend against life and liberty, to him offended and to the law in his behalf, though born in the same womb, he is no better than a Turk, a Saracen, a heathen."
John Milton
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
1649

Selfish Ruler a Tyrant

"A tyrant, whether by wrong or by right coming to the crown, is he who, regarding neither law nor the common good, reigns only for himself and his faction: thus St. Basil among others, defines him.
John Milton
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
1649

Election of Kings

"This, though it cannot but stand with plain reason, shall be made good also by Scripture (Deut. XVII,14):'When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations about me.' These words confirm us that the right of choosing, yea of changing their own government, is by the grant of God himself in the people. And therefore when they desire a king, though then under another form of government and though their changing displeased him, yet he that was himself their king and rejected by them would not be a hindrance to what they intended further than by persuasion, but that they might do therein as they saw good (I Sam. VII),only he reserved to himself the nomination of who should reign over them."
John Milton
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
1649

Origins of Authority

"It being thus manifest that the power of kings and magistrates is nothing else but what only is derivative, transferred, and committed to them in trust from the people to the common good of them all, in whom the power remains fundamentally and cannot be taken from them without a violation of their natural birthright, and seeing that from hence Aristotle, and the best of political writers, have defined a king, him who governs to the good and profit of his people, and not for his own ends--it follows from necessary causesthat the titles of sovereign lord, natural lord, and the like, are either arrogancies or flatteries, not admitted by emperors and kings of best note, and disliked by the church both of Jews (Isaiah 26,13) and ancient Christians, as appears by Tertullian and others. Although generally the people of Asia, and with them the Jews also, especially since the time they chose a king against the advice and counsel of God, are noted by wise authors much inclinable to slavery."
John Milton
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
1649

Nature of Contract

"No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself, and were, by privilege above all the creatures, born to command, and not to obey; and that they lived so, till from the root of Adam's transgression falling among themselves to do wrong and violence, and foreseeing that such courses must needs tend to the destruction of them all, they agreed by common league to bind each other from mutual injury, and jointly to defend themselves against any that gave disturbance or opposition to such agreement. Hence came cities, towns, and commonwealths. And because no faith in all was found sufficiently binding, they saw it needful to ordain some authority that might restrain by force and punishment what was violated against peace and common right."

John Milton
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
1649

Virtue In Government

"For, indeed, none can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom but license, which never have more scope or more indulgence than under tyrants."
John Milton
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
1649