such a system of rotation as would
change each completely every third year (ante pp. 483-484). His only
criticism on the competing models then had been that, till his own
notion of Church-disestablishment were carried into effect, "no model
whatsoever of a Commonwealth, would prove successful or undisturbed."
At that time, accordingly, Milton was so engrossed with his
Church-disestablishment notion as to be comparatively careless about
the general question of the Form of Government. But, two months
later, as we have seen, in his _Letter on the Ruptures of the
Commonwealth_ occasioned by Lambert's assault on the Rump, he had
abandoned this indifference, and had proposed a model Constitution of
his own, adapted to the immediate exigencies. From that time, we may
now report, though Church-disestablishment was never lost sight of,
the question of the Form of Government had fastened itself on
Milton's mind as after all the main one. From that time he never
ceased to ruminate it himself, and he attended more to the
speculations and theories of others on the same subject. If, once or
twice in the winter months of 1659, Cyriack Skinner, the occasional
chairman of the Rota Club, did not persuade Milton to leave his house
in Petty France late in the evening, and be piloted through the
streets to the Coffee-house in New Palace Yard to hear one of the
great debates of the Club, and become acquainted with their method of
closing the debate by a ballot, it would really be a wonder.----Not
in the Rota Club, however, but in the Committee of Safety at
Whitehall and in the Wallingford-House Council, was the real and
practical debate in progress. On the 1st of November the Committee
had appointed their sub-committee of six to deliberate on the new
Constitution; and through the rest of the month, both in the
sub-committee and in the general committee, there had been that
intricate discussion in which Vane led the extreme party, or party of
radical changes, while Whitlocke stood for lawyerly use and wont in
all things, and Johnstone of Warriston threw in suggestions from his
peculiar Scottish point of view. So far as Milton was cognisant of
the discussion, his hopes must have been in the efforts of his friend
Vane. If any one could succeed in inducing his colleagues to insert
articles for Church-disestablishment and full Liberty of Conscience
into the new Constitution, who so likely as he who had held those
articles as tenets of his private