ecessity of our affairs and factions will [at any rate] constrain
long enough perhaps to content the longest liver in the Army. And
whether the Civil Government be an annual Democracy or a perpetual
Aristocracy is not to me a consideration for the extremities wherein
we are, and the hazard of our safety from our common enemy, gaping at
present to devour us. That it be not an Oligarchy, or the Faction of
a few, may be easily prevented by the numbers of their own choosing
who may be found infallibly constant to those two conditions
forenamed--full Liberty of Conscience and the Abjuration of Monarchy
proposed; and the well-ordered Committees of their faithfullest
adherents in every county may give this Government the resemblance
and effects of a perfect Democracy. As for the Reformation of Laws
and the Places of Judicature, whether to be here, as at present, or
in every county, as hath been long aimed at, and many such proposals
tending no doubt to public good, they may be considered in due time,
when we are past these pernicious pangs, in a hopeful way of health
and firm constitution. But, unless these things which I have above
proposed, one way or other, be once settled, in my fear (which God
avert!), we instantly ruin, or at best become the servants of one or
other Single Person, the secret author and fomenter of these
disturbances."

There is considerable boldness in these proposals of Milton, and yet
a cast of practicality which is unusual with him. They prove again,
if new proof were needed, that he was not a Republican of the
conventional sort. He glances, indeed, at the possibility of an
"Annual Democracy," i.e. a future succession of annual Parliaments,
or at least of annual Plebiscites for electing the Government. But he
rather dismisses that possibility from his calculations; and
moreover, even had he entertained it farther, we know that the
Parliaments or Plebiscites he would have allowed would not have been
"full and free," but only guarded representations of the
"well-affected" of the community,--to wit, the Commonwealth's-men.
But the Constitution to which he looks forward with most confidence,
and which he ventures to think might answer all the purposes of a
perfect democracy, is one that should consist of two perpetual or
life aristocracies at the centre,--one a civil aristocracy in the
form of a largish Council of State, the other a military aristocracy
composed of the great Army Officers,--these two ari