[Life of John Milton by Richard Garnett]@TWC D-Link book
Life of John Milton

CHAPTER VI
14/33

He does indeed, near the end, betray a suspicion that the people may object to hand over the whole business of legislation to a self-elected and irresponsible body, and is led to make a remarkable suggestion, prefiguring the federal constitution of the United States, and in a measure the Home Rule and Communal agitations of our own day.
He would make every county independent in so far as regards the execution of justice between man and man.

The districts might make their own laws in this department, subject only to a moderate amount of control from the supreme council.

This must have seemed to Milton's contemporaries the official enthronement of anarchy, and, in fact, his proposal, thrown off at a heat with the feverish impetuosity that characterizes the whole pamphlet, is only valuable as an aid to reflection.

Yet, in proclaiming the superiority of healthy municipal life to a centralized administration, he has anticipated the judgment of the wisest publicists of our day, and shown a greater insight than was possessed by the more scientific statesmen of the eighteenth century.
One quality of Milton's pamphlet claims the highest admiration, its audacious courage.

On the very eve of the Restoration, and with full though tardy recognition of its probable imminence, he protests as loudly as ever the righteousness of Charles's execution, and of the perpetual exclusion of his family from the throne.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books