“A Parliament hath its rise from the lowest Office in a Commonwealth, viz., from the Father in a Family.  For as a Father’s tender care is to remove all grievances from the oppressed children, not respecting one before another; so a Parliament are to remove all burdens from the people of the Land, and are not to respect persons who are great before those who are weak; but their eye and care must be principally to relieve the oppressed ones, who groan under the Tyrant’s Laws and Powers:  the strong, or such as have the Tyrant’s Power to support them, need no help.

“But though a Parliament be the Father of a Land, yet by the Covetousness and Cheats of Kingly Government the heart of this Father hath been alienated from the children of the Land, or else so overawed by the frowns of a Kingly Tyrant, that they could not or durst not act for the weaker children’s ease.  For hath not Parliament sat and rose again, and made Laws to strengthen the Tyrant in his Throne, and to strengthen the rich and the strong by those Laws, and left Oppression upon the backs of the oppressed still?”

HIS HOPES FOR THE FUTURE.

Here Winstanley checks himself, and continues: 

“But I’ll not reap up former weaknesses, but rather rejoice in hope of amendment, seeing our present Parliament hath declared England to be a Free Commonwealth, and to cast out Kingly Power:  and upon this ground I rejoice in hope that succeeding Parliaments will be tender-hearted Fathers to the oppressed children of the Land.  And not only dandle us upon the knee with good words and promises till particular men’s turn be served, but will feed our bellies and clothe our backs with good actions of Freedom, and give to the oppressed children’s children their birthright portion, which is Freedom in the Commonwealth’s Land, which the Kingly Law and Power, our cruel step-fathers and step-mothers, have kept from us and our fathers for many years past.

     “THE PARTICULAR WORK OF A PARLIAMENT IS FOUR-FOLD—­FIRSTLY,

“As a tender Father, a Parliament is to empower Officers and give orders for the free planting and reaping of the Commonwealth’s Land, that all who have been oppressed, and kept back from the free use thereof by Conquerors, Kings, and their Tyrant Laws, may now be set at liberty to plant in Freedom for food and raiment, and are to be a protection to them who labor the Earth, and a punisher of them who are idle.

“But some may say, What is that I call Commonwealth’s Land?  I answer, All that land which hath been withheld from the inhabitants by the Conqueror, or Tyrant Kings, and is now recovered out of the hands of that oppression by the joint assistance of the persons and purses of the Commoners of the Land.  For this Land is the price of their blood.  It is their birthright to them and to their posterity, and ought not to be converted into particular hands again by the