“Our Expiring Libertie” 1658–1660not having “many Sovranties united in one Commonwealth, but many Common-
wealths under one united and entrusted Sovrantie” (461). He discusses his federal
scheme chiefly under the topic of civil rights, as a means to assure the “advance-
ments of every person according to his merit” (458), expanding upon his earlier
provisions for local autonomy in education, justice, law, legislation, and control of
the militia. Every county will function as a little commonwealth, in which “the
nobilitie and chief gentry... may bear part in the government:” they would make
judicial laws, administer justice through local courts, and elect judges, exercising
themselves in such matters “till thir lot fall to be chosen into the Grand Councel,
according as thir worth and merit shall be taken notice of by the people” (458–60).
Also, as in the Letter to Monk, general assemblies in each county would meet on
various occasions to “declare and publish thir assent or dissent” on all general laws
and taxes proposed by the Grand Council, and he now gives them the added duty
of inspecting the public accounts (459, 61). In addition, he projects local schools
and academies like those discussed in Of Education, wherein the sons of the county
elites “may be bred up in thir own sight to all learning and noble education not in
grammar only, but in all liberal arts and exercises” (460). This is quite a different
education from the one he designed in The Likeliest Means for prospective ministers
from the lower classes. He now makes explicit his expectation that such education
and such experience in local government will prepare citizens for service at the
national level, and will spread “much more knowledge and civility, yea religion,
through all parts of the land” (460), thereby creating the kind of citizens a republic
needs:
To make the people fittest to chuse, and the chosen fittest to govern, will be to mend
our corrupt and faulty education, to teach the people faith not without vertue, tem-
perance, modestie, sobriety, parsimonie, justice; not to admire wealth or honour; to
hate turbulence and ambition; to place every one his privat welfare and happiness in
the public peace, libertie and safety. (443)But in the present crisis all such reforms must be “referrd to time” (444).
In several heartfelt passages Milton denounces the besotted multitude who seem
ready to creep back to the “detested thraldom of Kingship,” displaying the innate
political weakness Milton deplored in his countrymen in the History of Britain as
well as a moral depravity that is proving infectious: a “strange degenerate conta-
gion” or “epidemic madness.”^134 In this situation, Milton justifies the liberty-loving
minority – a large number he still insists – to act as and for the whole. He divides
the nation into two entities, insisting that the rights of liberty-lovers should be
preserved by the plan he proposes despite or against the political will of the slavish
multitude:
That a nation should be so valorous and courageous to winn thir liberty in the field,
and when they have wonn it, should be so heartless and unwise in thir counsels, as...