It would, doubtless, have failed in the trial,--for the conception of a perpetual Civil Council at Whitehall always in harmony with a perpetual Military Council in Wallingford House presupposed moral conditions in both bodies less likely to be forthcoming in themselves than in Milton's thoughts about them.

But everything else would have failed equally, and some of the "models" perhaps more speedily.

Since the subversion of Richard's Protectorate by Fleetwood and Desborough there had been no possible stop-gap against the return of the Stuarts.
The consulting authorities at Whitehall and Wallingford House did adopt a course having some semblance of that suggested by Milton.
Before the 25th of October, or within six days after the date of Milton's letter, the relics of the Council of State of the Rump agreed to be transformed, with additions nominated by the Officers, into the new Supreme Executive called _The Committee of Safety_; and, as _The Wallingford-House Council of Officers_ still continued to sit in the close vicinity of this new Council at Whitehall, the Government was then vested, in fact, in the two aristocracies, with Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and others, as members of both, and connecting links between them.

But the new _Committee of Safety_ was not such a Senate or Council as Milton had imagined.

For one thing, it consisted but of twenty-three persons (see the list ante p.