Other pens were quicker, and to their productions Milton, in 1654, replied with his _Second Defence of the English People_, a tract containing autobiographical details of immense interest and charm. By this time he was totally blind, though, with a touch of that personal sensitiveness ever characteristic of him, he is careful to tell Europe, in the _Second Defence_, that externally his eyes were uninjured, and shone with an unclouded light. Milton's _Defences of the English People_ are rendered provoking by his extraordinary language concerning his opponents. 'Numskull,' 'beast,' 'fool,' 'puppy,' 'knave,' 'ass,' 'mongrel-cur,' are but a few of the epithets employed. This is doubtless mere matter of pleading, a rule of the forum where controversies between scholars are conducted; but for that very reason it makes the pamphlets as provoking to an ordinary reader as an old bill of complaint in Chancery must have been to an impatient suitor who wanted his money. The main issues, when cleared of personalities, are important enough, and are stated by Milton with great clearness. 'Our king made not us, but we him. Nature has given fathers to us all, but we ourselves appointed our own king; so that the people is not for the king, but the king for them.' It was made a matter of great offence amongst monarchs and monarchical persons that Charles was subject to the indignity of a trial. With murders and poisonings kings were long familiar. These were part of the perils of the voyage, for which they were prepared, but, as Salmasius put it, 'for a king to be arraigned in a court of judicature, to be put to plead for his life, to have sentence of death pronounced against him, and that sentence executed,'--oh! horrible impiety. To this Milton replies: 'Tell me, thou superlative fool, whether it be not more just, more agreeable to the rules of humanity and the laws of all human societies, to bring a criminal, be his offence what it will, before a court of justice, to give him leave to speak for himself, and if the law condemns him, then to put him to death as he has deserved, so as he may have time to repent or to recollect himself; than presently, as soon as ever he is taken, to butcher him without more ado?' But a king of any spirit would probably answer that he preferred to have his despotism tempered by assassination than by the mercy of a court of John Miltons. To which answer Milton would have rejoined, 'Despotism, I know you not, since we are as free as any people under heaven.' The weakest part in Milton's case is his having to admit that the Parliament was overawed by the army, which he says was wiser than the senators. Milton's address to his countrymen, with which he concludes the first defence, is veritably in his grand style: