The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth: As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social ReformerBerens, Lewis Henry
History
The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth: As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer
Berens, Lewis Henry
Communism; Land use; Winstanley, Gerrard, 1609-
And this formed the heading of his next chapter, in which in a specially
lively manner he first points out that the Laws of a Monarchy--which,
being based upon inequality, necessarily tend to produce inequality, and
whose main function is to legalise and to maintain privileges--are
necessarily essentially different from those suitable to a Free
Commonwealth--which, being based upon the recognition of the equality of
rights, would necessarily tend to produce an equality of social
conditions; and whose main function would be to establish and to
legalise Justice, equal rights and equal duties, to maintain and to
enforce the equal claims of all to the use of the earth, to life, to
liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness. It commences as follows:
OF KINGLY LAWS.
"The King's Old Laws cannot govern in times of Bondage and in times
of Freedom too. They have indeed served many masters, Papish and
Protestant. They are like old Soldiers, who will but change their
name, and turn about, and as they were. The Reason is because they
are the prerogative will of those, under any Religion, who count it
no Freedom to them unless they be Lords over the minds, persons and
labors of their bretheren.
"They are called the King's Laws, because they are made by the
King. If any say they were made by the Commoners, it is answered,
They were not made by the Commoners as the Commoners of a Free
Commonwealth are to make Laws. For in the days of the King none
were to choose or be chosen Parliament Men, or Law Makers, but
Lords of Manors, and Freeholders, such as held title to their
Enclosures of Land, or Charters for their Liberties in Trades,
under the King, who called the Land his, as he was the Conqueror or
his successor. All inferior people were neither to choose nor be
chosen. And the reason was because all Freeholders of Land and such
as held their Liberties by Charter, were all of the King's
interest; and the inferior people were successively of the rank of
the conquered ones, and servants and slaves from the time of the
Conquest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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