et in the Stationers'
Registers.--It is particularly necessary to remember that this was
but the _first edition_ of the pamphlet. Another was to follow.
In all the editions of Milton's collected works, from that of 1698
onwards, the reprint is from the later edition, without notice of the
first; but I hardly know a case in which the distinction between two
editions is more important.]

The pamphlet opens thus:--

"Although, since the writing of this treatise, the face of things
hath had some change, writs for new elections [by the late Rump]
have been recalled, and the members at first chosen [for the
original Long Parliament] readmitted from exclusion to sit again in
Parliament, yet, not a little rejoicing to hear declared the
resolutions of all those who are now in power, jointly tending to
the establishment of a Free Commonwealth, and to remove, if it be
possible, this unsound humour of returning to old bondage instilled
of late by some cunning deceivers, and nourished from bad
principles and false apprehensions among too many of the people, I
thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping it may
perhaps (the Parliament now sitting more full and frequent) be now
much more useful than before: yet submitting what hath reference to
the state of things as they then stood to present constitutions,
and, so the same end be pursued, not insisting on this or that
means to obtain it. The treatise was thus written as follows."

This is an attempt by Milton even yet to disguise his despondency. He
had written the pamphlet while the late Rump was still sitting, while
the conjunction between them and Monk was unbroken, and when the last
news was that they had issued, or were about to issue, writs for the
recruiting of their body by a large number of like-minded additional
members; but he will assume that the pamphlet may yet answer its
purpose, with hardly a change of phraseology. No longer, it is true,
does the power lie with the Rump, recruited or unrecruited; it lies
now in the unexpected Parliament of the Residuary Rumpers _plus_
Monk's restored representatives of the pre-Commonwealth period of the
Long Parliament. But he will suppose the best even after that
surprise. There is, at any rate, a more "full and frequent"
Parliament than before: and there has been no declaration hitherto of
any intention to subvert the Commonwealth. On the contrary, had not
Monk, both in his speech to t