If we desire to be of the former, nothing better for us, nothing nobler, than a Free Commonwealth; if we will needs condemn ourselves to be of the latter, despairing of our own virtue, industry, and the number of our able men, we may then, conscious of our own unworthiness to be governed better, sadly betake us to our befitting thraldom: yet, choosing out of our own number one who hath best aided the people and best merited against tyranny, the space of a reign or two we may chance to live happily enough, or tolerably.

But that a victorious people should give up themselves again to the vanquished was never yet heard of, seems rather void of all reason and good policy, and will in all probability subject the subduers to the subdued,--will expose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin and perpetual bondage, the victors, under the vanquished: than which what can be more unworthy ?" Of far more moment than the _Brief Notes on Dr.Griffith's Sermon_ was a second and enlarged edition of the _Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_.
Though it is announced distinctly and emphatically in the opening paragraph that this edition is a "revised and enlarged" one, not till after a careful comparison with the former edition is it seen how much the announcement implies.

There are large additions; there are omissions; there are changes of phraseology in every page.

The new pamphlet, were it nothing else, would be an interesting study of Milton's art in authorcraft, of the expertness he had acquired in recasting a composition of his, ingeniously dove-tailing passages into it without spoiling the connexion, and ejecting phrases that had ceased to be relevant or vital, all under the difficulties of his blindness, when his ear listening to some mouth beside him and his own mouth interrupting and replying were his sole instruments.

But there is much more than this.