“There is but one way to remove an evil—­and that is to remove its cause.  Poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages are forced down while productive power grows, because land, which is the source of all wealth and the field of all labour, is monopolised.  To extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice demands they should be, the full earnings of the labourer, we must therefore substitute for the individual ownership of land a common ownership.  Nothing else will go to the cause of the evil—­in nothing else is there the slightest hope.”—­HENRY GEORGE, 1877-1878.

In the pamphlet we have considered in the previous chapter we heard that “there have some come among the Diggers that have caused scandal,” and whose ways were disowned by Winstanley and his associates.  A few weeks subsequent to its publication, Winstanley judged it necessary publicly and formally to dissociate himself and his companions from them, which he did, in a manner quite in accordance with his own principles, in a small pamphlet of some eight pages, which was published under the title: 

“A VINDICATION OF THOSE WHOSE ENDEAVOURS IS ONLY TO MAKE THE EARTH
A COMMON TREASURY, CALLED DIGGERS:  Or Some Reasons given by
them against the immoderate use of creatures, or the excessive
community of women, called Ranting or rather Renting,"[146:1]

which, after a long condemnation of “the Ranting Practice,” runs as follows: 

“There are only two things I must speak as an advice in Love.

“First, Let everyone that intends to live in peace set themselves with diligent labour to till, dig and plow the common and barren land, to get them bread with righteous, moderate working, among a moderate-minded people; this prevents the evil of idleness, and the danger of the Ranting power.

“Secondly, Let none go about to suppress that Ranting power by the punishing hand; for it is the work of the Righteous and Rational Spirit within, not thy hand without, that must suppress it.  But if thou wilt need be punishing, then see thou be without sin thyself, and then cast the first stone at the Ranter.  Let not sinners punish others for sin, but let the power of thy reason and righteous action shame and so beat down their unrational actings.  Wouldst thou live in peace, then look to thy own ways, mind thy own Kingdom within....  Let everyone alone to stand or fall their own Master; for thou being a sinner and striving to suppress sinners by force, thou wilt thereby but increase their rage and thine own trouble.  But do thou keep close to the Law of Righteous Reason, and thou shalt presently see a return of the Ranters:  for that Spirit within must shame them and turn them and pull them out of darkness.”

After emphasising the fact that such evil actions must necessarily bring evil on those who indulge in them, the pamphlet concludes with the following words: