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-
20. The waiters in Storehouses shall deliver the goods in their charge
without receiving any money, as they shall receive in their goods
without paying any money.
21. If any waiter in a Storehouse neglect his Office, upon a just
complaint, the Overseers shall acquaint the Judge's Court therewith; and
from thence he shall receive his sentence, to be discharged that house
and office, to be appointed some other work under the Task-master; and
another shall have his place. For he who may live in Freedom and will
not, is to taste of servitude.
LAWS FOR OVERSEERS.
22. The only work of every Overseer is to see the Laws executed. For the
Law is the True Magistracy of the land.
23. If any Overseer favour any in their idleness and neglect the
execution of the Laws, he shall be reproved, the first time by the
Judge's Court; the second time cashiered his Office, and shall never
bear Office more, but fall back into the ranks of young people and
servants to be a worker.
24. New Overseers, at their first entrance into their office, shall look
back upon the actions of the Old Overseers of the last year, to see if
they have been faithful in their places, and consented to no breach of
Law, whereby Kingly Bondage should in any way be brought in.
25. The Overseers for Trades shall see every Family to lend assistance
to plant and reap the fruits of the Earth, to work in their Trades, and
to furnish the Storehouses. And to see that the Waiters in Storehouses
be diligent to receive in and deliver out any goods, without buying and
selling, to any man whatsoever.
26. While any Overseer is in performance of his place, every one shall
assist him, upon pain of open reproof (or cashiered if he be another
Officer) or forfeiture of freedom, according to the nature of the
business in hand, in which he refused his assistance.
LAWS AGAINST BUYING AND SELLING.
27. If any man entice another to buy and sell, and he who is enticed
does not yield, but makes it known to the Overseer, the enticer shall
lose his freedom for twelve months, and the Overseer shall give words of
commendation of him that refused the enticement before all the
Congregation, for his faithfulness to the Commonwealth's Peace.
THE UNPARDONABLE SIN!
28. If any do buy and sell the Earth, or the fruits thereof, unless it
be to or with strangers of another Nation, according to the Law of
Navigation, they shall be both put to death as Traitors to the Peace of
the Commonwealth. Because it brings in Kingly Bondage again, and is the
occasion of all quarrels and oppressions.
29. He, or she, who calls the Earth his, and not his brother's, shall be
set upon a stool, with those words written in his forehead, before all
the Congregation, and afterwards be made a Servant for twelve months
under the Task-master. If he quarrel, or seek by secret persuasion or
open rising in arms to set up such a Kingly Propriety, he shall be put
to death.
30. The Storehouses shall be every man's subsistence, and not any ones.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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