without danger and mischance of putting out a great number of the best and ablest: in whose stead new elections may bring in as many raw, unexperienced, and otherwise affected, to the weakening and much altering for the worse of public transactions. Neither do I think a perpetual senate, especially chosen or entrusted by the people, much in this land to be feared, where the wellaffected, either in a standing army, or in a settled militia, have their arms in their own hands. Safest therefore to me it seems, and of least hazard or interruption to affairs, that none of the grand council be moved, unless by death, or just conviction of some crime :(") for what can be expected firm or steadfast from a floating foundation? However, I

(11) A senate composed of members chosen for life would be a species of tyranny. It is therefore most extraordinary to find such an institution recommended by Milton, whose extensive reading must have furnished him with numerous examples of the evils which a body of this kind would naturally cause. In his analysis of the Spartan government, this one of the defects that Aristotle objects to Lycurgus: "When the legislator enacted that the members of this council should hold their office for life, he did not consider that the understanding grows old as well as the body." (Politics, l. ii. c. 7.) Late in life, most men lose their enthusiasm, their energy and decision, are slow in council, and timorous in action; wherever the majority of the senators, therefore, are old, the policy of the nation will be distinguished by pusillanimity, by a preference of wealth to virtue, by a slowness to admit just and necessary reforms, which they will stigmatize with the name of innovations, and their neighbours will outstrip them in the arts both of war and peace. All this was doubtless known to Milton; but the times were unsettled, and he hoped they might, by the establishment of a perpetual senate, be more rapidly and effectually composed.

forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be found in things of this nature, so disputable on either side.

20. Yet lest this which I affirm be thought my single opinion, I shall add sufficient testimony. Kingship itself is therefore counted the more safe and durable because the king, and for the most part his council, is not changed during life. But a commonwealth is held immortal, and therein firmest, safest, and most above fortune: for the death of a king causeth ofttimes many dangerous alterations; but the death now and then of a senator is not felt, the main body of them still continuing permanent in greatest and noblest commonwealths, and as it were eternal. Therefore among the Jews, the supreme council of seventy, called the Sanhedrim, founded by Moses, in Athens that of Areopagus, in Sparta that of the ancients, in Rome the senate, consisted of members chosen for term of life; and by that means remained as it were still the same to generations. In Venice they change indeed oftener than every year some particular council of state, as that of six, or such other: but the true senate, which upholds and sustains the government, is the whole aristocracy immovable. So in the United Provinces, the states-general, which are indeed but a council of state deputed by the whole union, are not usually the same persons for above three or six years; but the states of every city, in whom the sovereignty hath been placed time out of mind, are a standing senate, without succession, and

accounted chiefly in that regard the main prop of their liberty. And why they should be so in every well-ordered commonwealth, they who write of policy give these reasons: That to make the

senate successive, not only impairs the dignity and lustre of the senate, but weakens the whole commonwealth, and brings it into manifest danger; while by this means the secrets of state are frequently divulged, and matters of greatest consequence committed to inexpert and novice counsellors, utterly to seek in the full and intimate knowledge of affairs past.

21. I know not therefore what should be peculiar in England, to make successive parliaments thought safest, or convenient here more than in other nations, unless it be the fickleness which is attributed to us as we are islanders. But good education and acquisite wisdom ought to correct the fluxible fault, if any such be, of our watery situation. It will be objected, that in those places where they had perpetual senates, they had also popular remedies against their growing too imperious: as in Athens, besides Areopagus, another senate of four or five hundred; in Sparta, the Ephori; in Rome, the tribunes of the people.

22. But the event tells us, that these remedies either little availed the people, or brought them to such a licentious and unbridled democracy, as in fine ruined themselves with their own excessive power. (12) So that the main reason urged why

(12) By the laws of Sparta, while all the other citizens were

popular assemblies are to be trusted with the people's liberty, rather than a senate of principal men, because great men will be still endeavouring to enlarge their power, but the common sort will be contented to maintain their own liberty, is by experience found false; none being more immoderate and ambitious to amplify their power, than such popularities, which were seen in the people of Rome; who, at first contented to have their tribunes, at length contended with the senate that one consul, then both; soon after, that the censors and prætors also should be created plebeian, and the whole empire put into their hands; adoring lastly

subjected to a severe discipline, the Ephori were indulged in the exercise of the most unbounded luxury. Aristotle censures this, as being opposed to the prevailing spirit of Lycurgus's laws, which was harsh and rugged. Without having the vanity to suppose ourselves to have discovered what Aristotle could not, we think he has overlooked the reason of this extraordinary indulgence. The Spartan constitution was essentially aristocratic, and the institution of the Ephori, a concession made reluctantly to the will of the people. But, while this democratic power was created, steps were secretly taken to render it weak and inefficient; and, among a people educated in the exclusive admiration of abstemiousness, and indifference for pleasure, a course more likely to succeed could not have been devised than to overwhelm the popular magistrates by the temptations of effeminacy and debauchery. To the Spartan nobility, a drunken Ephorus would have been a spectacle no less edifying and agreeable than a druken Helot: "Such," might they observe to each other, or to the populace, "are ever the magistrates elected by or from among the people!” which would be a weighty argument in favour of retaining all offices of state in their own hands. That such a polity was not at all too refined for Spartan heads may be inferred from the well-known method they adopted to inculcate sobriety among their children.

those, who most were adverse to the senate, till Marius, by fulfilling their inordinate desires, quite lost them all the power for which they had so long been striving, and left them under the tyranny of Sylla. The balance therefore must be exactly so set, as to preserve and keep up due authority on either side, as well in the senate as in the people. And this annual rotation of a senate to consist of three hundred, as is lately propounded, requires also another popular assembly upward of a thousand, with an answerable rotation. Which, besides that it will be liable to all those inconveniences found in the aforesaid remedies, cannot but be troublesome and chargeable, both in their motion and their session, to the whole land, unwieldy with their own bulk, unable in so great a number to mature their consultations as they ought, if any be allotted them, and that they meet not from so many parts remote to sit a whole year lieger in one place, only now and then to hold up a forest of fingers, or to convey each man his bean or ballot into the box, without reason shown or common deliberation; incontinent of secrets, if any be imparted to them; emulous and always jarring with the other senate. The much better way doubtless will be, in this wavering condition of our affairs, to defer the changing or circumscribing of our senate, more than may be done with ease, till the commonwealth be thoroughly settled in peace and safety, and they themselves give us the occasion.

23. Military men hold it dangerous to change the form of battle in view of an enemy: neither