her rebellion! Alas!
alas! Mr Milton! If there be no choice but between despotism and
anarchy, I prefer despotism."

"Many men," said Mr Milton, "have floridly and ingeniously compared
anarchy and despotism; but they who so amuse themselves do but look at
separate parts of that which is truly one great whole. Each is the cause
and the effect of the other; the evils of either are the evils of
both. Thus do states move on in the same eternal cycle, which, from the
remotest point, brings them back again to the same sad starting-post:
and, till both those who govern and those who obey shall learn and mark
this great truth, men can expect little through the future, as they
have known little through the past, save vicissitudes of extreme evils,
alternately producing and produced.

"When will rulers learn that, where liberty is not, security end order
can never be? We talk of absolute power; but all power hath limits,
which, if not fixed by the moderation of the governors, will be fixed
by the force of the governed. Sovereigns may send their opposers to
dungeons; they may clear out a senate-house with soldiers; they may
enlist armies of spies; they may hang scores of the disaffected in
chains at every cross road; but what power shall stand in that frightful
time when rebellion hath become a less evil than endurance? Who shall
dissolve that terrible tribunal, which, in the hearts of the oppressed,
denounces against the oppressor the doom of its wild justice? Who shall
repeal the law of selfdefence? What arms or discipline shall resist
the strength of famine and despair? How often were the ancient Caesars
dragged from their golden palaces, stripped of their purple robes,
mangled, stoned, defiled with filth, pierced with hooks, hurled into
Tiber? How often have the Eastern Sultans perished by the sabres of
their own janissaries, or the bow-strings of their own mutes! For no
power which is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them. Small,
therefore, is the wisdom of those who would fly to servitude as if it
were a refuge from commotion; for anarchy is the sure consequence of
tyranny. That governments may be safe, nations must be free. Their
passions must have an outlet provided, lest they make one.

"When I was at Naples, I went with Signor Manso, a gentleman of
excellent parts and breeding, who had been the familiar friend of that
famous poet Torquato Tasso, to see the burning mountain Vesuvius. I
wondered how the peas