capitalism

332 Minimal State
language often anticipates that of the American revolutionaries.
“The power of Kings and Magistrates,” he wrote,
is nothing else but what is only derivative, transferr’d and
committed to them in trust from the People, to the
Common good of them all, in whom the power yet
remaines fundamentally, and cannot be tak’n from them,
without a violation of their natural birthright. ...
Milton believed that the king served as an agent of the
people, that he was charged with protecting them in their
persons and property and could be removed by them when
and how they deemed fit.
The unlooked-for defense of republicanism to the point
of regicide earned Milton Cromwell’s high esteem, as well
as a position as secretary of foreign tongues. In this post, he
was charged with continuing the defense of Cromwell’s
fledgling Commonwealth by banishing the martyr cult then
forming around the dead king. He set about the task with
vigor, undertaking a series of responses “on behalf of the
English people” to continental scholars of varying levels of
esteem. But as Milton was propounding the virtues of
republican government, Cromwell was transforming the
powers of the Protector into a dictatorship. Although in one
sonnet Milton referred to the Lord Protector as “our chief
of men,” privately he grew concerned with the antirepublican
implications of such a title, the more so as he saw
Cromwell move to revive the House of Lords and, worse,
reestablish a state-run, state-controlled Church of England.
Thus, at Cromwell’s death, Milton revised and republished
his first defense of the Commonwealth and followed
it with a new work emphasizing the importance of separating
church and state, in the hope of seeing the nation return
to a republican form of government. He even went so far as
to advocate, in The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free
Commonwealth, a federal structure of local governments
largely independent of a much-weakened Parliament.
However, it soon became apparent that restoration of the
monarchy was inevitable, and with it would come a purge
of republican sympathizers. As a consequence, Milton was
forced into hiding. Although in the end he was arrested,
several influential friends managed to remove his name
from the list of those marked for death, and he was soon
released. In the eyes of many, he emerged “nothing more
than an infamous outcast ...who had, by too great
clemency, been left unhanged,” but he was already hard at
work on the poem that would redeem his reputation.
Although it is his Satan that exerts the greatest influence
over the modern-day imagination, Milton’s stated
purpose in writing Paradise Lost was to “justify the ways
of God to men.” Fresh from the bitter setback of
Restoration, Milton must have felt he was due some justification
of God’s ways; it is hard to escape the image of
Adam and Eve banished from Eden as an acknowledgment
that England’s revolutionary moment was now past. In his
final years, Milton produced a history of England, a Latin
grammar, and an anti-Catholic pamphlet. His last great
poetic work was Samson Agonistes: a tragic setting of the
tale of the Israelite judge whose individual salvation was
assured at the moment of his death as his nation lay in
ruins about him.
See also Censorship; Contractarianism/Social Contract; English
Civil Wars
Further Readings
AF
Armitage, David, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner, eds.
Milton and Republicanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995.
Corns, Thomas N. John Milton: The Prose Works. New York:
Twayne, 1998.
Hill, Christopher. Milton and the English Revolution. London: Faber
& Faber, 1977.
Hughes, Merritt Y., ed. John Milton: Complete Poems and Major
Prose. New York: Prentice Hall, 1957.
Knoppers, Laura, Lunger Semenza, and Gregory M. Colón,
eds. Milton in Popular Culture. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006.
Lieb, Michael. Theological Milton: Deity, Discourse and
Heresy in the Miltonic Canon. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne
University Press, 2006.
Parker, William Riley. Milton: A Biography. 2nd ed. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996.
Patrides, C. A. Milton and the Christian Tradition. London: Oxford
University Press, 1966.
MINIMAL STATE
Libertarianism, and the classical liberalism from which
it sprang, supports a strictly limited state, if indeed its
adherents recognize the legitimacy of the state at all. The
minimal state is a notion found within a particular variant
of the limited-government variety of libertarianism. In
the conception offered here, it was introduced by Robert
Nozick, whose Anarchy, State, and Utopia is the most
influential work supporting libertarianism by an American
philosopher. Although Nozick criticized individualist
anarchism, he did hold that the minimal state was the
form of government that was morally justifiable.
Nozick’s starting point is a society in which no government
exists. In this situation, he maintained, people largely,
although not entirely, respect the rights of others. Among
these rights are self-ownership and the right to acquire
property. In addition, individuals may use force against
those who violate one’s rights. This starting point is the