25, 26][1] ...

And what Government comes nearer to this precept of Christ than a Free Commonwealth?
Wherein they who are greatest are perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their own costs and charges,--neglect their own affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren,--live soberly in their families, walk the streets as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly, without adoration: whereas a King must be adored like a demigod, with a dissolute and haughty Court about him, of vast expense and luxury, masques and revels, to the debauching of our prime gentry both male and female,--nor at his own cost, but on the public revenue,--and all this to do nothing but bestow the eating and drinking of excessive dainties, to set a pompous face upon the superficial actings of State, to pageant himself up and down in progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings of an abject people." [Footnote 1: This is one of Milton's very long sentences; and the length shows, I think, the glow and rapidity of the dictation.] Having thus expressed his belief that "a Free Commonwealth, without Single Person or House of Lords, is by far the best government, _if it can be had_," Milton glances at the objection that recent experience in England has shown such government to be practically unattainable.

He denies this, alleging that all disappointment hitherto "may be ascribed with most reason to the frequent disturbances, interruptions, and dissolutions which the Parliament hath had, partly from the impatient or disaffected people, partly from some ambitious leaders in the Army"; and he declares that the present time is peculiarly favourable for one more vigorous effort.
"Now is the opportunity, now the very season, wherein we may obtain a Free Commonwealth, and establish it for ever in the land without difficulty or much delay." He had written this when the Rump was sitting, and when he had in view the new elections that were to recruit that "small remainder of those faithful worthies who at first freed us from tyranny and have continued ever since through all changes constant to their trust"; but he lets it stand now, as not inapplicable to the new condition of things brought in by the sudden mixture of the Secluded with the Rumpers.

The "_Ready and Easy Way_," however, has still to be explained; and to that he proceeds.
The central idea of the pamphlet, and practically its backbone, is _One and the same Parliament in Perpetuity or Membership for Life_.

This may be a surprise, not only to those who, knowing that Milton was a Republican, conceive him therefore to have held necessarily the exact modern theory of Representative Government, but also to those who understand Milton better, and who may remember at this point his somewhat contemptuous estimates on previous occasions of the value of the bodies called Parliaments.