e are now in the winter of 1655-6, and we have seen no Secretarial
work from Milton since his letters and other documents in the
business of the Piedmontese Protestants in May, June, and July, 1655.
Officially, therefore, he had had another relapse into idleness. Not,
however, into total idleness. "_Scriptum Dom. Protectoris
Reipublicae Anglicae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, &c., ex Consensa atque
Sententia Concilii Sui Edictum, in quo Hujus Reipublicae Causa contra
Hispanos justa esse demonstratur_, 1655" ("Manifesto of the Lord
Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland. Ireland, &c., put
forth by the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice
of the cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is
demonstrated, 1655"), is the title of a Latin document, of the length
of about twenty such pages as the present, now always included in
editions of Milton's prose-writings, on the probability, though not
quite the certainty, that it was Milton's performance. If so, it was
the third great document in the nature of a Declaration of War
furnished by Milton for the Commonwealth, the two former having been
his Latin version of the Declaration of the Causes of War against the
Scots in June 1650 (IV. 228) and his similar version of the
Declaration against the Dutch in July 1652 (IV. 482-483). The present
manifesto was perhaps a more difficult document to draft than either
of those had been, inasmuch as Cromwell had to justify in it his
recent attack upon the Spanish possessions in the West Indies.
Accordingly, the manifesto had been prepared with some pains. It
passed the Council finally on the 26th of October, 1655, four days
after the Spanish ambassador Cardenas had left England, and two days
after the Treaty between Cromwell and France had been signed;[1] and
the Latin copies of it were out in London on the 9th of November.[2]
Unlike the previous Declarations against the Scots and the Dutch,
which had been printed in several languages, it appears to have been
printed in Latin only.

[Footnote 1: Council Order Book of date.]

[Footnote 2: Dated copy among the Thomason Pamphlets.]

A general notion of the document will be obtained from, an extract or
two in translation. The opening is as follows:--

"That the causes that induced us to our recent attack on certain
Islands in the West Indies, now for some time past in the
possession of the Spaniards, are just and in the highest degree
reasonable, there i