This account corresponds with the tenor of the petitions which we read of as presented to the republican parliament by ‘levellers.’ They are simply a continuation of the agreements and remonstrances issued by the council of the army during the agitation of 1648, which in the main no doubt expressed the mind of Cromwell and Ireton. Their demand is for reforms, which for the most part stood over for nearly another two hundred years, till they began to be carried out by the ‘purged parliament’ of 1832. With minor variations according to circumstances, they pray, firstly, for a cheap and expeditious process of law, to be the same for all, with no exemptions in virtue of tenure or privilege; the laws to be written and in English; secondly, the abolition of all feudal courts, payments, and privileges; thirdly, the maintenance of the clergy by some other method than tithes, which, let us remember, were not then commuted, but were a perpetual source of carnal dispute between the clergy and the farmers; fourthly, the removal of monopolies, custom-duties, and excise, and the imposition of equal taxation; fifthly, the abolition of imprisonment for debt; all {339} estates to be liable for debt, and the rich not to turn prisons into places of protection; sixthly, the establishment of perfect freedom of conscience; and seventhly and lastly comes the demand, which presented the real difficulty, the dissolution of the sitting parliament, with provision for calling a new one at regular intervals.