"_March 26th, 1650._"

We are afraid that the enterprise at Wellinborrow did not have a very
long life; for in the _Calendar of State Papers_, Domestic, Green, p.
106, under date April 15th, 1650, we note the following letter, which
seems to us to show that the Rulers of England were fully alive to "the
mischief these designs tend to," and to prove that it was the theories
of the Diggers, not their actions, that filled the breasts of the
privileged classes with the determination to nip their enterprise in the
bud, before it had time to influence the life and thought of the Nation:

"COUNCIL OF STATE to Mr. PENTLOW, Justice of Peace for County
Northampton.

"We approve your proceedings with the Levellers in those parts, and
doubt not you are sensible of the mischief those designs tend to,
and of the necessity to proceed effectually against them. If the
laws in force against those who intrude upon other men's
properties, and that forbid and direct the punishing of all riotous
assemblies and seditious and tumultuous meetings, be put in
execution, there will not want means to preserve the public peace
against the attempts of this sort of people. Let those men be
effectually proceeded against at the next Sessions, _and if any
that ought to be instrumental to bring them to punishment fail in
their duty, signify the same to us_, that we may require of them an
account of their neglect; but till we find the ordinary means
unable to preserve the peace, we would not have recourse to any
other."

The sentence we have italicised seems to show that even amongst the
Justices of the Peace and Officers of the Land the doctrines of the
Diggers had found sympathisers, who were unwilling that they should be
proceeded against. Nor can we be surprised at this when we bear in mind
the terrible state of the rural population of the "meaner sort" at the
time. Some idea of same may be gathered in the Declaration from
Wellinborrow, which is more than fully confirmed in the pages of
Whitelocke, from which we take the following brief entries:

(P. 398.) Under date April 30th, 1649:

"Letters from Lancashire of their want of bread, so that many
families were starved."

(P. 399.) Under date May 1649:

"Letters from Newcastle that many in Cumberland and Westmoreland
died in the Highways for want of bread, and divers left the