“For the Sake of Liberty” 1652–1654servitude precludes devotion to liberty and the nation’s liberators. Finally, in an
eloquent cri de coeur, Milton adjures the English to become the virtuous and liberty-
loving citizens they must be if they are to exercise political power, laying out in
clear terms that natural law whereby virtue goes hand in hand with liberty, vice
with slavery:
[T]o be free is precisely the same as to be pious, wise, just, and temperate, careful of
one’s property, aloof from another’s, and thus finally to be magnanimous and brave,
so to be the opposite to these qualities is the same as to be a slave. And by the custom-
ary judgment and, so to speak, just retaliation of God, it happens that a nation which
cannot rule and govern itself, but has delivered itself into slavery to its own lusts, is
enslaved also to other masters whom it does not choose.... You, therefore, who
wish to remain free, either be wise at the outset or recover your senses as soon as
possible. If to be a slave is hard, and you do not wish it, learn to obey right reason, to
master yourselves. Lastly, refrain from factions, hatreds, superstitions, injustices, lusts,
and rapine against one another. Unless you do this with all your strength you cannot
seem either to God or to men, or even to your recent liberators, fit to be entrusted
with the liberty and guidance of the state and the power of commanding others,
which you arrogate to yourselves so greedily. (684)Milton asserts as strongly as ever the religious and civil liberties he most values,
but he now must rely on Cromwell to achieve them. He still wants a more repre-
sentative government, but unless citizens rise to the challenge of living in a free
republic they will need a Protector: “Then indeed, like a nation in wardship, you
would rather be in need of some tutor, some brave and faithful guardian of your
affairs” (684). That, however, represents a falling off from their past glory: “If the
most recent deeds of my fellow countrymen should not correspond sufficiently to
their earliest, let them look to it themselves” (685). Milton’s political theory as
articulated in this tract assumes that the ancient republican virtues and the emerging
personal liberties he so cherishes are inextricably linked, that virtue in the citizenry
is at once the ground for, and the product of, liberty. There is no easy escape from
this vicious – or rather virtuous – circle, since Milton cannot allow the majority to
follow its very different notion of virtue and liberty by recalling the king (thereby
threatening religious liberty and curtailing personal freedom); nor will he, with the
Barebones “Saints,” equate political virtue with regeneracy. He can only hope that
Cromwell will heed his call for expanded liberties, and that the resulting change in
the political culture will, with the grace of God, produce the citizens the republic
needs.