concocted by the law and carried out by parties interested in its success, was entered into, to cheat the English workmen of his wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive him of hope, and to degrade him into irremediable poverty." Or, as he elsewhere expresses it[89:2]--"For more than two centuries and a half the English law, and those who administered the law, were engaged in grinding down the English workman to the lowest pittance, in stamping out every expression or act which indicated any organised discontent, and in multiplying penalties upon him when he thought of his natural rights." FOOTNOTES: [79:1] King's Pamphlets. British Museum, Press Mark E 475 (11). [83:1] King's Pamphlets. British Museum, Press Mark, E. 548 (33). [84:1] King's Pamphlets. British Museum, Press Mark, E. 555. [85:1] About this time, or a little later, there appeared in London an interesting manifesto from some of the disbanded soldiers, the copy of which in the British Museum (Press Mark, 4152. b.b. 109) bears no date, but is addressed as follows: "To the Generals and Captains, Officers and Soldiers of this present Army. The Just and Equal Appeal, and the state of the Innocent Cause of us, who have been turned out of your Army for the exercise of our pure Consciences, who are now persecuted amongst our Brethren under the name of Quakers." Wherein they declare that "The first cause and ground of our engagement in the late wars against the Bishops and Prelates, and against Kings and Lords, and the whole body of oppressors: our first engagement, we say, against these was justly and truly upon that account of purchasing and obtaining Liberties in Civil Rights, and also in matters of Conscience in the exercise of the worship of God.... And we can safely say that the Liberty of Conscience and the True Freedom of the Nations from all their oppressions was the mark at which we aimed, and the harbour for which we hoped and the rest proposed in our minds as the absolute end of our long and weary travel." [87:1] _History of the Protectorate_, vol. i. pp. 50, 51. [89:1] _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, p. 398. [89:2] _Socialism and Land._ Essay in a Quarterly Review, _Subjects of the Day_, part ii. p. 52. CHAPTER IX THE DIGGERS' MANIFESTOES