itutionalized Protectorship instead. But, indeed, by this time,
it is possible that Milton, though still Oliverian in the main, still
a believer in Cromwell's greatness and goodness, was not so devotedly
an Oliverian as he had been when he had written his panegyric on the
Protector and the Protectorate in his _Defensio Secunda_. Even
then he had made his reserves, and had ventured to express them in
advices and cautions to Cromwell himself. He can hardly have
professed that in those virtues of the avoidance of arbitrariness and
self-will, the avoidance of over-legislation and over-restriction,
which he had especially recommended to Cromwell, the rule of the
Protector through the last three years had quite satisfied his ideal.
Many of the so-called "arbitrary" measures, and even the temporary
device of the Major-Generalships, he may have excused, as Cromwell
himself did, on the plea of absolute necessity; all the measures
distinctly for repression of Royalist risings and conspiracies must
have had his thorough approbation; and, in the great matter of
liberty of speculation and speech, Cromwell had certainly shown more
sympathy with the spirit of Milton's _Areopagitica_ than most of
his Councillors or either of his Parliaments. Nor, as we have
sufficiently seen, did Milton's notions of Public Liberty, any more
than Cromwell's, formulate themselves in mere ordinary
constitutionalism, or the doctrine of the rightful supremacy of
Parliaments elected by a wide or universal suffrage, and a demand
that such should be sitting always. He had more faith perhaps, as
Cromwell had, in a good, broad, and pretty permanent Council, acting
on liberal principles, and led by some single mind. But there
_had_ been disappointments. What, for example, of the frequent
questionings and arrests of Bradshaw, Vane, and other high-minded
Republicans whom Milton admired, and what especially of the prolonged
disgrace and imprisonment of his dear friend Overton? Or, even if the
plea of necessity or supposed necessity should cover such cases too
(for Cromwell's informations through Thurloe might reach farther than
the public knew, and the good Overton, at all events, had gone into
devious and dangerous courses), what about the Protector's grand
infatuation on the subject of an Established Church? He had preserved
the abomination of a State-paid ministry; he had made that
institution the very pride of his Protectorate; he was actually
fattening up over