The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth / As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer

by Lewis Henry Berens

The true Function of a Commonwealth Army.

“A Monarchial Army lifts up mountains and makes valleys, viz., advances Tyrants and treads the oppressed in the barren lanes of poverty. But a Commonwealth’s Army is like John the Baptist, who levels the Mountains to the Valleys, pulls down the Tyrant, and lifts up the Oppressed: and so makes way for the Spirit of Peace and Freedom to come in to rule and inherit the Earth.

“By this which has been spoken an Army may see wherein they may do well and wherein they may do hurt.”

The Office of the Post-Master.

Under this heading Winstanley describes an office by which he evidently thought the social bonds uniting the whole Nation might be strengthened and all parts thereof be brought into closer and more intimate relations one with the other. He describes its functions as follows:

“In every Parish throughout the Commonwealth shall be chosen two men (at the time when the other Officers are chosen), and these shall be called Post-Masters. And whereas there are four parts of the Land, East, West, North, South, there shall be chosen in the chief City two men to receive what the Post-Master of the East Country brings in”; and so on. “Now the work of a Country Post-master shall be this: They shall every month bring up or send by tidings from their respective Parishes to the chief City, of what accidents or passages fall out, which is either to the honor or dishonor, hurt or profit, of the Commonwealth. And if nothing have fallen out in that month worth observation, then they shall write down peace or good order in such a Parish.

“When these respective Post-masters have brought up their Bills or Certificates from all parts of the Land, the Receiver of these Bills shall write down everything in order from Parish to Parish in the nature of a Weekly Bill of Observation. And those eight Receivers shall cause the Affairs of the Four Quarters of the Land to be printed in one Book with what speed may be, and deliver to every Post-master a Book, that as they bring up the affairs of one Parish in writing, they may carry down in print the Affairs of the Whole Land.”

Its Benefits.

“The benefit lies here, that if any part of the Land be visited with Plague, Famine, Invasion or Insurrection, or any casualties, the other parts of the Land may have speedy knowledge, and send relief. And if any accident fall out through unreasonable action, or careless neglect, other parts of the Land may thereby be made watchful to prevent like dangers. Or if any through industry or through ripeness of understanding have found out any secret in Nature, or new invention in any Art or Trade, or in the tillage of the Earth, or such like, whereby the Commonwealth may more flourish in peace and plenty, for which virtues those persons received honor in the places where they dwelt; then, when other parts of the Land hear of it, many thereby will be encouraged to employ their Reason and Industry to do the like; that so in time there will not be any Secret in Nature, which now lies hid (by reason of the iron age of Kingly Oppressing Government) but by some or other will be brought to light, to the beauty of our Commonwealth.”

With this suggestive passage this chapter may fittingly close. Like his great successor in the Nineteenth Century, Winstanley evidently realised that “Liberty means Justice, and Justice is the Natural Law—the law of health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity and co-operation.”