John Milton's political beliefs in Paradise Lost. John Milton was a revolutionary who wanted a republic and found the monarchs useless. During the seventeenth century he supported Cromwell and tried to overthrow the king Charles I. Milton believed in rule by merit and was against rule by birth. He found living under a monarch demeaning because as he stated in Ready and Easy Way he believed that a monarch has little to do but "...pageant himself up and down in progress among the perpetual bowing and cringing of an abject people, on either side deifying and adoring him for nothing done that can deserve it." John Milton's voice in Paradise Lost is one of the most distinctive and individualistic in English literature and through Satan's speeches Milton embodies his own political views. To begin with, in Paradise Lost can be read as a political allegory, character and events can be aligned with aspects of the political context of the poem's creation. Milton infuses his political thinking using Heaven as metaphor of the greatest Kingdom. Hell represents a republic, God the powerful monarch, and Satan is the protagonist of his ideas. In Book I Satan says, " Me though just right, and the fixed laws of Heav'n / Did first create your leader, next, free choice,[...] Established in a safe unenvied throne / Yielded with full consent,". In the quote Satan argues that in Heaven God rules without the consent of his subjects, shoving the hard work and sacrifice off the others, and explains that he being chosen as leader would be quite the opposite. Through the speeches of Satan in Hell, Milton illustrates the way he believed true leaders should act, and how they should be selected. Likewise, Satan's attempts to rouse the fallen angels are reminiscent of Milton's desire to rally support for the Cromwellian government. For example, as the poem expresses in Book I, "Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n" and adds, "Here we may reign secure, and my choice / To reign is worth ambition, Though in Hell; / Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n." . Satan delivers his heroic speech challenging God, and tells the other rebels that they can change the world, there is nothing that is fixed, Hell can be the Heaven, and vice versa. Satan is trying to encourage them to continue challenging God. As Mary Ann Radzinowicz puts it in The Politics of Paradise Lost "Milton […] deposits in Satan's 'democratic, antipatriarchal, irreligious views' his own pre-Restoration republicanism.".