Defensio pro Populo Anglicano
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Defensio pro Populo Anglicano is a Latin polemic by John Milton, published in 1651. The full title in English is John Milton an Englishman His Defence of the People of England. It can be considered a piece of propaganda in a non-pejorative sense, since it makes a political argument in support of what was at the time the government of England.
This work was commissioned by Parliament during Oliver Cromwell's protectorship of England, as a response to a work by Claudius Salmasius entitled Defensio Regia pro Carlo Primo ("Royal Defence on behalf of Charles I"). Salmasius argued that the rebels led by Cromwell were guilty of regicide for executing King Charles. Milton responded with a detailed justification of the parliamentary party.
The work includes considerable invective against Salmasius and accusations of that scholar's inconsistency for taking contradictory positions. Milton also claims Salmasius wrote his work only due to being bribed with a "hundred Jacobuses" by the exiled son of Charles, who would later become King Charles II of England. The level of ad hominem attack is high and much unlike what one would expect from a serious contemporary debater even on a controversial topic. For example, here is an excerpt from the beginning of Chapter VIII, where Milton sarcastically asks Salmasius what concern the latter has with what the English do among themselves:
- "...It were better for you to return to those illustrious titles of yours in France: first to that hungerstarved Seigneurie of St. Loup, and next to that sacré Council of the Most Christian King; you are too far abroad from your own country for a counsellor. But I see full well that France desires not either you or your counsel, and did not, even when you were back a few years ago, and were beginning to smell out and hunt after a Cardinal's kitchen. She is right, by my troth, she is right, and can willingly allow you, you French capon, with your mankind wife and your desks chock-full of emptiness, to wander about, till somewhere in creation you light upon a dole bountiful enough for a grammarian-cavalier or illustrious hippo-critic,--always supposing any king or state has a mind to bid highest for a vagabond pedant that is on sale...." (Alvis 253-4)
Despite the level of insult employed, Milton's polemic does provide an effective response, both rhetorically and argumentatively, to Salmasius' volume. In fact, in modelling his pamphlet on the Philippic form, Milton finds a classical antecedent for his method in Cicero's personal attacks on Mark Antony.
Salmasius never published a response during his lifetime, though a fragment of a reply was printed posthumously.
[edit] Further reading
The Defensio is most readily accessible in English translation in the Columbia University Press edition of Milton's works:
- Frank Allen Patterson et. al., eds., The Works of John Milton, 18 vols., New York: Columbia University Press, 1931-38.
A recent reprint of this text can be found in:
- John Alvis, ed., Areopagitica and Other Political Writings of John Milton, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999. ISBN 0-86597-197-8.
