Well, let it
appear now that thou hast fought and acted for thy Country's
Freedom. But if when thou hast power to settle Freedom in thy
Country, thou takest the possession of the Earth into thy own
particular hands, and makest thy Brother work for thee, as the
Kings did, thou hast fought and acted for thyself, not for thy
Country, and here thy inside hypocrisy is discovered.
"But here take notice, That Common Freedom, which is the Rule I
would have practiced and not talked on, was thy pretence, but
particular Freedom to thyself was thy intent. Amend, or else thou
wilt be shamed, when Knowledge doth spread to cover the Earth, even
as the waters cover the Seas. And so Farewell.
J. W."
To-day knowledge is commencing "to spread to cover the Earth even as the
waters cover the Seas"; and the thinkers of our times are rapidly coming
to realise, to use Shelley's words, that--"The most fatal error that
ever happened in the world was the separation of political and ethical
science": a separation against which, as we have seen, Winstanley in his
time protested so vigorously. Hence it is, probably, that the teachings
of our modern seers and prophets, of the leaders and inspirers of the
advanced thought of to-day, of Ruskin, Tolstoy, and even of Henry
George, almost seem to us but as the echoes of those of their great
forerunner in the stirring days of the Commonwealth.
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