Part 20 (1/2)
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 Fellows.h.i.+p 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