"For is not this a common speech among the People, We have parted
with our estates, we have lost our friends in the wars, which we
willingly gave up because Freedom was promised us; and now in the
end we have new Task-masters, and our old burthens are increased.
And though all sorts of people have taken an engagement to cast out
Kingly Power, yet Kingly Power remains in power still in the hands
of those who have no more right to the Earth than ourselves.
"For say the people, If the Lords of Manors and our Task-masters
hold Title to the Earth over us from the old Kingly Power, behold
that power is broken and cast out. And two Acts of Parliament have
been made. The one to cast out Kingly Power, backed by the
Engagement against King and the House of Lords. The other to make
England a Free Commonwealth."
He then still further supports 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.
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