Some barley is already come up, and other fruits formerly; but was
pulled up by some of the envious inhabitants thereabouts, who are
not so far convinced as to promise not to injure them for the
future. The ground will probably in a short time yield them some
fruit of their labour, how contemptible soever they do yet appear
to be."
Before following the further adventures of the Diggers, as revealed in
the numerous pamphlets they left us, from which alone they can now be
gathered, we deem it best to lay before our readers what we have been
able to ascertain of Gerrard Winstanley's previous life's history and
writings. Behind every movement that has ever influenced the thoughts of
mankind, there is always some master-mind, a Lautze, a Gautama, a Jesus
of Nazareth, a Wiclif, a John Wesley, a Darwin, a Tolstoy, or a Henry
George; and it is in the comparatively unknown Gerrard Winstanley that
we shall find the master-mind, the inspirer and director, of the Digger
Movement. As Gardiner well says, "It is not only by the immediate
accomplishment of its aim that the value of honest endeavour is to be
tested." And the reader's interest in our work may be quickened if we so
far forestall the pages that are to follow as to indicate that not only
were Winstanley's earlier theological writings the source whence the
early Quakers, or the Children of Light, as they at first called
themselves, drew many of their most characteristic tenets and doctrines,
but that the fundamental principles which inspired and animated his
political writings were in all respects identical with those that during
the past quarter of a century have been so honourably associated with
the name of Henry George.
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