The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth Part 20

SUMMARY OF THE RESULTS OF HIS PLAN.

"To prevent thy hasty rashness, I have given thee a short compendium of the whole.

"_First_, Thou knowst that the Earth in all Nations is governed by buying and selling, for all the Laws of Kings hath relation thereunto. Now this Platform following declares to thee the Government of the Earth without buying and selling, and the Laws are the Laws of a free and peaceable Commonwealth....

"Every family shall live apart, as now they do; every man shall enjoy his own wife, and every woman her own husband, as now they do: every Trade shall be improved to more excellency than now it is; all children shall be educated and trained up in subjection to parents and elder persons more than now they are: The Earth shall be planted and the fruits reaped and carried into Storehouses by common a.s.sistance of every family: The Riches of the Storehouses shall be the common stock to every Family: There shall be no idle person nor beggar in the Land."

COMMONWEALTH GOVERNMENT AND KINGLY GOVERNMENT.

"The Commonwealth's Government unites all people in a Land into one heart and mind. And it was this Government which made Moses to call Abraham's seed one House of Israel, though there were many Tribes and many Families. And it may be said, Blessed is the People whose Earthly Government is the Law of Common Righteousness....

"The Government of Kings is the Government of the Scribes and Pharisees, who count it no freedom unless they be the Lords of the Earth and of their Bretheren. But Commonwealth's Government is the Government of Righteousness and Peace, who is no respecter of persons."

FINAL APPEAL TO THE READER.

"Therefore, Reader, here is a trial for thy sincerity. Thou shalt have no want of food, raiment or freedom among bretheren in this way propounded. See now if thou canst be content, as the Scriptures say, Having food and raiment therewith be content, and grudge not to let thy brother have the same with thee.

"Dost thou pray and fast for Freedom, and give G.o.d thanks again for it? Why, know that G.o.d is not partial. For if thou pray, it must be for Freedom to all; and if thou give thanks, it must be because Freedom covers all people: for this will prove a lasting peace.

"Everyone is ready to say, They fight for their Country, and what they do, they do it is for the good of their Country. Well, let it appear now that thou hast fought and acted for thy Country's Freedom. But if when thou hast power to settle Freedom in thy Country, thou takest the possession of the Earth into thy own particular hands, and makest thy Brother work for thee, as the Kings did, thou hast fought and acted for thyself, not for thy Country, and here thy inside hypocrisy is discovered.

"But here take notice, That Common Freedom, which is the Rule I would have practiced and not talked on, was thy pretence, but particular Freedom to thyself was thy intent. Amend, or else thou wilt be shamed, when Knowledge doth spread to cover the Earth, even as the waters cover the Seas. And so Farewell.

J. W."

To-day knowledge is commencing "to spread to cover the Earth even as the waters cover the Seas"; and the thinkers of our times are rapidly coming to realise, to use Sh.e.l.ley's words, that--"The most fatal error that ever happened in the world was the separation of political and ethical science": a separation against which, as we have seen, Winstanley in his time protested so vigorously. Hence it is, probably, that the teachings of our modern seers and prophets, of the leaders and inspirers of the advanced thought of to-day, of Ruskin, Tolstoy, and even of Henry George, almost seem to us but as the echoes of those of their great forerunner in the stirring days of the Commonwealth.

FOOTNOTES:

[163:1] _History of the Commonwealth_, vol. i. p. 446.

[163:2] _Ibid._ p. 471.

[164:1] King's Pamphlets. British Museum, Press Mark, E. 655. Also at the Guildhall Library and the Bodleian.

[164:2] At the very time this book was being written, some of the new settlements in America were making Church Fellowship a necessary condition of civil rights.

[165:1] See Carlyle's _Letters and Speeches_, Speech II., Sept. 4th, 1654, part viii. p. 20.

[166:1] This argument would have appealed strongly to Cromwell, who, in one of his Speeches to his First Parliament, said: "If I had not a hope fixed in me that this cause and this business was of G.o.d, I would many years ago have run from it. If it be of G.o.d, He will bear it up. If it be of man, it will tumble; as everything that hath been of man since the world began hath done. And what are all our Histories and other Traditions of Actions in former times but G.o.d manifesting Himself, that He hath shaken and tumbled down, and trampled upon everything that He had not planted."--Carlyle, _Letters and Speeches_, part viii. p. 89.

[168:1] With this contention, too, Cromwell would have found himself in complete sympathy. For "the truth of it is, There are wicked and abominable laws which will be in your power to alter," he said to one of his Parliaments on Sept. 17th, 1656. "To hang a man for Six-and-eight-pence, and I know not what; to hang for a trifle and acquit murder,--is in the ministration of the Law, through the ill framing of it. I have known in my experience abominable murders acquitted. And to see men lose their lives for petty matters: this is a thing G.o.d will reckon for. And I wish it may not lie upon this Nation a day longer than you have an opportunity to give a remedy; and I hope I shall cheerfully join with you in it. This hath been a great grief to many honest hearts and conscientious people; and I hope it is in all your hearts to rectify it."

[170:1] "And truly this is matter of praise to G.o.d:--and it hath some instruction in it, To own men who are religious and G.o.dly. And so many of them as are peaceable and honestly and quietly disposed to live within Government, and will be subject to those Gospel rules of obeying Magistrates and living under Authority. I reckon no G.o.dliness without that circle! Without that spirit, let it pretend what it will, it is diabolical, it is devilish," and so on. See Cromwell's Speech to his Second Parliament, April 13th, 1657 (Carlyle, part x. p. 250). It would almost seem as if Winstanley had written the above paragraph to answer this explosive utterance of Cromwell, some six years before it took place. As a matter of fact, of course, he was only answering an objection which every little conventional upholder of existing abuses, in his time as in our time, would be sure to make in one form or other.

CHAPTER XV

GERRARD WINSTANLEY'S UTOPIA

THE LAW OF FREEDOM (_continued_)

"Look on yonder earth: The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak Peace, harmony and love.... Is Mother Earth A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; A mother only to those puling babes Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, that peace Which men alone appreciate?"--Sh.e.l.lEY.

"The end of law," says Locke, "is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom." Winstanley evidently held the same view; for he commences this, his last and greatest book, as follows:

"WHERE TRUE FREEDOM LIES.

"The great searching of heart in these days is to find out where true Freedom lies, that the Commonwealth of England might be established in peace. Some say, It lies in the free use of Trading, and to have all Patents, Licenses and Restraints removed: But this is a Freedom under the Will of a Conqueror. Others say, It is true Freedom to have Ministers to preach, and for people to hear whom they will, without being restrained or compelled from or to any form of worship: But this is an unsettled Freedom.... Others say, It is true Freedom that the Elder Brother shall be Land Lord of the Earth, and the Younger Brother a Servant: And this is but a half Freedom, and begets murmurings, wars and quarrels.

"All these, and such like, are Freedoms; but they lead to Bondage, and are not the true Foundation-Freedom which settles a Commonwealth in Peace.

"TRUE COMMONWEALTH'S FREEDOM LIES IN THE FREE ENJOYMENT OF THE EARTH.

"True Freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the Earth.... All that a man labors for, saith Solomon, is this, That he may enjoy the free use of the Earth with the fruits thereof (Eccles. 2. 24). Do not the Ministers preach for maintenance in the Earth? The Lawyers plead causes to get the possessions of the Earth? Doth not the Soldier fight for the Earth? And doth not the Land Lord require Rent that he may live in the fullness of the Earth by the labor of his Tenants? And so from the Thief upon the Highway to the King who sits upon the Throne, does not everyone strive, either by force of Arms or secret Cheats, to get the possessions of the Earth one from another, because they see their Freedom lies in plenty, and their Bondage lies in Poverty?"

Then occurs this eternally true pa.s.sage:

"Surely, then, oppressing Lords of Manors, exacting Land-lords and Tythe-takers, may as well say their Bretheren shall not breathe in the air, nor enjoy warmth in their bodies, nor have the moist waters to fall upon them in showers, unless they will pay them rent for it, as to say their Bretheren shall not work upon Earth, nor eat the fruits thereof, unless they will hire that liberty of them.

For he that takes upon him to restrain his Brother from the liberty of the one, may upon the same ground restrain him from the liberty of all four, viz., Fire, Water, Earth and Air.

"A man had better to have had no body than to have no food for it.

Therefore this restraining of the Earth from Bretheren by Bretheren is oppression and bondage; but the free enjoyment thereof is true Freedom."

INWARD AND OUTWARD BONDAGE.

"I speak now in relation between the Oppressor and the Oppressed, the Inward Bondages I meddle not with in this place, though I am a.s.sured that if it be rightly searched into, the inward bondages of the mind, as covetousness, pride, hypocrisy, envy, sorrow, fears, desperation and madness, are all occasioned by the outward bondage that one sort of people lay upon another. And thus far natural experience makes it good, THAT TRUE FREEDOM LIES IN THE FREE ENJOYMENT OF THE EARTH."

"WHAT IS GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL?

"Government is a wise and free ordering of the Earth and of the Manners of Mankind by observation of particular Laws or Rules, so that all the inhabitants may live peaceably in plenty and freedom in the Land where they are born and bred."

With this most suggestive, philosophic and beautiful definition of Government, Winstanley opens his second chapter, and immediately elucidates his views on this all-important subject by drawing what we regard as a true and just comparison between what he well terms Kingly Government and Commonwealth's Government, or, what would now be termed, Aristocracy and Democracy, as follows:

"WHAT IS KINGLY GOVERNMENT?

"There is a twofold Government: a Kingly Government and a Commonwealth's Government.

"Kingly Government governs the Earth by that cheating art of buying and selling, and thereby becomes a man of contention, his hand is against every man, and every man's hand against him ... and if it had not a Club Law to support it, there would be no order in it, because it is but the covetous and proud will of a Conqueror enslaving a conquered people.... Indeed, this Government may well be called the Government of Highwaymen, who hath stolen the Earth from the Younger Bretheren by force and holds it from them by force.... The great Lawgiver of this Kingly Government is Covetousness, ruling in the hearts of mankind, making one Brother to covet a full possession of the Earth, and a Lordly Rule over another Brother.... The Rise of Kingly Government is attributable to a politic wit in drawing the people out of Common Freedom into a way of Common Bondage: FOR SO LONG AS THE EARTH IS A COMMON TREASURY TO ALL MEN, KINGLY COVETOUSNESS CAN NEVER REIGN AS KING.