" By means of
their Financial Policy they rid themselves of the duties which
originally accompanied the privilege of land-holding, viz. to provide
the necessary public revenues for all defence purposes, and converted
themselves from Land Holders into Land Owners, by shifting the burden
of taxation to the food, industry, and handicraft of those they had
despoiled and disinherited. And, finally, for the first time in the
history of England, they passed a Corn Law artificially to increase
their rents, at the cost and to the detriment, often to the starvation,
of the masses of the people. From the effect of these laws the people of
Great Britain have not yet been able entirely to recover themselves,
though since 1824 they have made heroic steps to do so. With this
portion of the history, we had almost written of the martyrdom, of the
English people we are not here directly concerned. Manifestly it would
have been very different had the Long Parliament listened to
Winstanley's appeal, or had his self-sacrificing efforts been crowned
with the success they so well deserved.
FOOTNOTES:
[100:1] Thomasson's Tracts. British Museum, Press Mark, E. 560 (1).
Reprinted in the _Harleian Miscellany_, vol. ii. p. 485.
[103:1] Others, in far more influential positions than Winstanley and
his comrades, gave forcible expression to much the same views. In the
debates of the Army Council on the Agreement of the People, on November
1647, Edward Sexby, the Agitator or Representative of the private
soldiers, an able, daring, and energetic man, replying to Ireton, on the
question of the right to vote, said: "We have engaged in this kingdom
and ventured our lives, and it was all for this: to recover our
birthrights and privileges as Englishmen; and by the arguments urged,
there are none.
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