“Our Expiring Libertie” 1658–1660carefully calculated appeals to various audiences, but the opening and closing pas-
sages, probably written last, constitute an impassioned prophetic jeremiad denouncing
the depraved electorate bent on “chusing them a captain back for Egypt,”^125 as well
as a deeply felt personal testimony: “If thir absolute determination be to enthrall us,
before so long a Lent of Servitude, they may permitt us a little Shroving-time first,
wherin to speak freely, and take our leaves of Libertie” (CPW VII, 408–9). As he
stares into the abyss, Milton reminds himself and his compatriots of his good service
to the Good Old Cause:
Nor was the heroic cause unsuccessfully defended to all Christendom against the
tongue of a famous and thought invincible adversarie; nor... our victory at once
against two the most prevailing usurpers over mankinde, superstition and tyrannie
unpraisd or uncelebrated in a written monument, likely to outlive detraction, as it
hath hitherto convinc’d or silenc’d not a few of our detractors, especially in parts
abroad. (420–1)In this work rhetorical appeals and personal testimony intertwine so closely as to be
well-nigh inextricable. The prose style is sometimes deliberately plain, to reinforce
the simplicity of republican government by contrast with the extravagancies of
monarchy and the intricacies of the Harringtonian model. But passages in the satiric
or prophetic mode are characterized by dense imagery and striking metaphors.^126
Like the related models Milton set forth over the past several months, the plan of
government he elaborates here is pragmatic, not utopian. The fundamental elements
are security for religious liberty; abjuration of a king or Single Person; a single-
chamber Grand Council with members sitting for life unless removed for cause; and
devolution of certain judicial, educational, and legislative functions to the counties.
His political theory again justifies the rule of a worthy minority and the perpetuation
of a “Councel of ablest men,” but the application is, in the first edition of this tract,
first to the Rump (unsound on matters of church disestablishment), and then to the
largely Presbyterian Long Parliament that he had already denounced as corrupt,
intolerant, and dangerous.^127 Now he substitutes the new parliament about to con-
vene, which will be much worse by his standards. At this point any of them will be
“worthy” and “able” if they stave off the Restoration.
One lengthy addition in the opening section reviews the great deeds of that mi-
nority who carried through the revolution, to rekindle their determination to hold
their course. The Rump contained “a sufficient number to act in Parliament” as
representers of the free people of England, but number is not the point: their adher-
ents, “the best affected also and best principl’d of the people, stood not numbring or
computing on which side were most voices in Parlament, but on which side appeerd
to them most reason, most safetie” (412, 414). They judged the Rump Parliament
not by their intentions, which cannot be known, or by their personal goodness (some
were manifestly faulty), but by their counsels and actions in support of liberty: