reat occasions their assent will be
required to measures proposed by the Grand Council of the nation,
Milton does not anticipate that there will be much opposition "though
this GRAND COUNCIL be perpetual, as in that book [his pamphlet] I
proved would be best and most conformable to best examples"; but,
should there be opposition, "the known expedient may at length be
used of a partial _rotation_." This is all that Milton has to
say, with one exception:--"If these gentlemen convocated refuse these
fair and noble offers of immediate liberty and happy condition, no
doubt there be enough in every county who will thankfully accept
them, your Excellency once more declaring publicly this to be your
mind, and having a faithful veteran Army so ready and glad to assist
you in the prosecution thereof."--What Monk thought of Mr. Milton's
Letter, if he ever took the trouble to read it, may be easily
guessed. It was at this time that he was so often drunk or nearly so
at the dinners given in the City, and that Sir John Greenville, on
the part of Charles, was watching for an interview with him at St.
James's.

[Footnote 1: "_Published from the Manuscript_" is the addition
in all our present reprints. In other words, this Letter to Monk,
together with the previous _Letter to a Friend concerning the
Ruptures of the Commonwealth_, came into Toland's hands in the
manner described in Note p. 617, and was also given by Toland for
use in the 1698 edition of Milton's Prose Works.]

Not one of Milton's pamphlets had a larger immediate circulation or
provoked a more rapid fury of criticism than his _Ready and Easy
Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_.

From the Parliament indeed the response was only indirect; but every
atom of such indirect response was a dead and contemptuous negative.
Though, when Milton published the pamphlet, he was entitled to assume
that the compact between Monk and the Secluded Members whom he had
restored guaranteed a continuance of the Commonwealth form of
Government, the entire tenor of their proceedings during the
five-and-twenty days to which they confined their sittings (Feb.
2l-March 16, 1659-60) was such as to undeceive him and others on that
point, and to show that, though they abstained from abolishing the
Commonwealth themselves, they meant to leave the succeeding full and
free Parliament they had called at perfect liberty to do so. No other
construction could be put upon their votes even in ecclesiastic