tary monarch, and limited in kind and degree, by his gracious will and pleafure; and confequently to controul his arbitrary acts by the interpofition of good and wholesome laws is a manifest usurpation upon his prerogative. Milton al-lotted to the people a confiderable and important share in political government, founded upon original ftipulations for the rights and privileges of free fubjects, and called the monarch who should infringe or encroach upon these, however qualified by lineal fucceffion, a tyrant and an ufurper, and freely configned. him to the vengeance of an injured peo. ple. Upon Johnson's plan, there can be no fuch thing as public liberty.. Upon

Milton's, where the laws are duly exe

cuted,

cuted, and the people protected in the peaceable and legal enjoyment of their lives, properties, and municipal rights and privileges, there can be no fuch thing as ufurpation, in whose hands foever the executive power should be lodged. From this doctrine Milton never swerved; and in that noble apoftrophe to Cromwell, in his Second Defense of the people of England, he spares not to remind him, what a wretch and a villain he would be, should he invade those liberties which his valour and magnanimity had restored. If, after this, Milton's employers deviated from his idea of their duty, be it remembered, that he was neither in their fecrets, nor an inftrument in their arbitrary acts or encroach+

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ments on the legal rights of the fubject;: many (perhaps the most) of which were to be juftified by the neceffity of the times, and the malignant attempts of those who laboured to restore that wicked race of despotic rulers, the individuals of which had uniformly professed an utter enmity to the claims of a free people, and had acted accordingly, in perfect conformity to Dr. Johnson's political creed. On another hand, be it observed, that in those State-letters, latinized by Milton, which remain, and in those particularly written in the name of the Protector Oliver, the strictest attention is paid to the dignity and importance of the British nation, to the protection of trade, and the Protestant religion, by fpi

rited expostulations with foreign powers on any infraction of former treaties, in a style of steady determination, of which there have been few examples in subsequent times. A certain sign in what esteem the British government was held at that period by all the other powers of Europe. And as this was the only province in which Milton acted under that government which Dr. Johnson calls an ufurpation, let his fervices be compared with those performed by Dr. Johnfon for his present patrons; and let the conftitutional subject of the British empire judge which of them better deserves the appellation of a traitor to public liberty, or have more righteously earned

the honey of a penfion.

The real ufurper is the wicked ruler. over a poor people, by whatever means the power falls into his hands. And whenever it happens that the imperium ad optimum quemque a minus bono transfertur, the fubject is or should be too much interefted in the fact to confider any character of the rejected ruler but his vicious ambition, the violence and injustice of his counfels, and the flagitious acts by which they were executed.

These petulant reflections of the Doctor on Milton, might, many of them, easily be anfwered by recrimination; we have often wondered, in running over this new narrative, that the confciouf

ness of the hiftorian's heart did not dif

able his hand for recording several things

to