rts his fundamental contention in the
following unanswerable manner:
"If Lords of Manors lay claim to the Earth over us from the Army's
Victories over the King; then we have as much right to the Land as
they, because our labors and blood and death of friends, were the
purchasers of the Earth's Freedom as well as theirs. And is not
this a slavery, say the people, that though there be land enough in
England to maintain ten times as many people as are in it, yet some
must beg of their bretheren, or work in hard drudgery for day wages
for them, or starve, or steal, and so be hanged out of the way, as
men not fit to live on the Earth? Before they are suffered to plant
the waste land for a livelihood, they must pay rent to their
bretheren for it. Well, this is a burthen the Creation groans
under; and the subjects (so-called) have not their birth-right
freedom granted them from their bretheren, who hold it from them by
Club-Law, but not by Righteousness."
WHAT IS TO RULE?
"And who now must we be subject to, seeing the Conqueror is gone? I
answer, We must either be subject to a law or to men's wills. If to
a law, then _all_ men in England are subject, or ought to be,
thereunto.... You will say, We must be subject to the Rulers. This
is true, but not to suffer the Rulers to call the Earth theirs and
not ours; for by so doing they betray their trust and run into the
line of tyranny, and we lose our freedom, and from thence enmity
and wars arise. A Ruler is worthy double honor when he rules well;
that is, when he himself is subject to the Law, and requires all
others to be subject thereunto, and makes it his work to see the
Law obeyed, and not his own will; and such Rulers are faithful, and
they are to be subjected unto us therein: For all Commonwealth's
Rulers are Servants to, not Lords and Kings over the
people."[170:1]
THE LAND QUESTION.
"But you will say, Is not the land your brother's? and you cannot
take away another man's right by claiming a share therein with him.
I answer, It is his either by Creation Right or by Right of
Conquest. If by Creation Right he calls the Earth his and not mine,
then it is mine as well as his; for the Spirit of the whole
Creation, who made us both, is no respecter of persons. And if by
Conquest he calls the E
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