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

Here, then, we must bid farewell to Gerrard Winstanley. We are uncertain as to the place and year of his birth; we know not where he lived, nor where or when he died; yet his words still appeal to us, prompting us to cast off the blinding and distorting spectacles of convention and custom, to look the facts of social life fairly and squarely in the face, and boldly to proclaim whatever social truths reflection and study may reveal to us. Such are the lessons which his life and teachings seem to us to inculcate.

What Winstanley regarded, and what a steadily increasing number of earnest students to-day regard, as a fundamental social truth was revealed to him; and right well he gave expression, by words and deeds, to his strong and well-grounded conviction of the equal claim of all to the use of Mother Earth, to the use of the nation’s natural home, workhouse and storehouse, whence, by labour, everything necessary to life and comfort can alone be derived. Winstanley realised, as they to-day realise, that to admit in the abstract the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, to admit the equal claim of all to life, and yet to deny the equal claim of all to the use of God’s Earth, to share in those blessings which the great Father of all men has lavished upon His children, and which form the only means by which life can be maintained, is but hypocrisy and cant. The “rights of property,” the financial interests of the privileged classes, the Elder Brothers, the so-called “power of the capitalists,” may be based on and involved in the recognition of the claim of the few to control the use of the Earth. But the rights of man, the material, moral and spiritual interests of the masses of mankind, their emancipation from the unjust economic conditions to-day enthralling and impoverishing them, narrowing and degrading their lives, depriving them of all real enjoyment of the present, as of all hope for the future, hindering the advance of the race to a nobler civilisation, to a higher plane of individual and social life, depend upon our recognising and enforcing the claim of all to the use of the Earth, and to share in the bounties of Nature, upon equitable terms. What Winstanley discovered and proclaimed in the Seventeenth Century, Henry George rediscovered and again proclaimed in the Nineteenth Century, and that in tones which are still reverberating and producing their effects on social thought throughout the length and breadth of the civilised world, promising ultimately to produce a change in social conditions compared with which the abolition of slavery sinks into comparative insignificance. It is no longer a question of the emancipation of a few chattel slaves, but of the whole human race.

Fundamental social laws and institutions, based upon inequality of rights, must necessarily produce inequality of conditions. And all who impartially consider the question will be forced to admit that both Winstanley and Henry George trace the prevailing social inequality, the debauching wealth of the few and the degrading poverty of the many, to its true cause. Nor can there be any doubt but that if Winstanley’s practical and efficacious remedy had been adopted, if the use of the Common Land had been secured to the Common People on equitable terms, the economic condition of the masses of the generations which succeeded him, the whole subsequent economic, social and political history of the English People, would have been very different; and they would not now, in the Twentieth Century, be fighting for, or more often whispering with bated breath concerning, those very reforms he so strenuously advocated over two hundred and fifty years ago.

Winstanley’s writings met with the fate that awaits all thought much in advance of the times in which it is given to the world. They have been ignored and forgotten; and till very recently even his memory had vanished from the minds of his fellow-countrymen, to whose emancipation he unstintedly devoted his life. Nor can we be surprised at this, when we consider the circumstances. There can be little doubt but that his earlier writings were the quiver whence the early Quakers derived many of their arrows, their most pointed and consequently by their opponents most hated doctrines. And yet the highly philosophic and rational attitude toward cosmological and theological speculations Winstanley attained to in his last pamphlet, placed before our readers in Chapter XVI., seems to us sufficiently to account for his having been ignored even by those who may have availed themselves of his earlier works, and hence that these, too, should have been gradually forgotten.

That the same fate should have befallen his political writings, his noble and yet simple and practical political ideals and aspirations, is also not surprising. After the Restoration, when, as we have already shown, Winstanley’s bitter opponents, the old and new landholders, were in the saddle, and made unsparing, we had almost written unscrupulous, use of their opportunities, such doctrines as his were little likely to commend themselves to the privileged, cultured and educated classes. Prior to the Reformation, education, at least the knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic, was undoubtedly more widely diffused amongst the masses of the people than it was subsequently—at all events, till very recent times. From the Restoration to within our own times, education, even the knowledge of reading, was as a very general rule only within the reach of the few, of the privileged classes and those more or less dependent on their favour, with whom such ideals as those voiced by Winstanley would naturally meet with but scant consideration. Moreover, though we may be accused of pessimism or cynicism for saying so, it seems to us that the main reason why teachings such as Winstanley’s must necessarily remain specially unpalatable and unwelcome so long as social and political privileges are allowed to continue, is that they are too simple and direct, and the path toward their realisation too clearly indicated, to be acceptable or welcome to those who benefit, or think they benefit, by the continuance of social injustice. Winstanley’s proposals, as the proposals of his great modern representative, Henry George, are, indeed, a test of sincerity. It is easy to express approval of Freedom, Justice, Honesty, Equality of Opportunities, Brotherhood, of the Equal Right of All to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, and so on, in the abstract, and to talk about the necessity for men, other men, dealing honestly, equitably and righteously one toward the other. It is difficult, though but a test of our own honesty and sincerity, to give practical support to unpopular doctrines and proposals which would tend to make these noble and elevating conceptions into real, living realities, and to enforce us to act honestly, equitably and righteously ourselves. Hence it is that even to-day those who advocate any such doctrines, any such social change, are either dismissed as impossible, utopian dreamers, or denounced as revolutionary demagogues, as “prophets of iniquity,” “preachers of immorality,” “advocates of villany,” as enemies of society, and so on; and if this fails of its desired effects, other means are found by which their influence is undermined and their teachings discredited in the minds of those who more or less blindly follow in the wake of the “superior classes,” the privileged few and their more or less direct dependents. Thus Society continues its troubled slumbers until—until the necessary changes denied to peaceful reformers, to the thinkers of the race, may be demanded, by revolutionary methods, by force, by those who know themselves injured and oppressed, though they may be ignorant of the means by which they are wronged.

It was, however, as a sincere and unswerving advocate of peaceful, practical reforms, as a courageous and unflinching opponent of the use of force, of the sword, even for righteous ends, that Winstanley appealed to his own generation, as Henry George, Ruskin and Tolstoy appeal to the present. Nor can there be any doubt but that his teachings found far more general acceptance than is to be gathered from modern histories of the troubled times in which his lot was cast. For not only was there sufficient demand to warrant the publication of at least two editions of The Law of Freedom, as of several of his other pamphlets, but additional testimony is to be gathered from the fact that his writings were immediately pirated and issued under new titles by other publishers:[232:1] than which no better evidence can be had of the popularity of any writer.

However this may be, new and less earnest and less strenuous generations arose which knew not Winstanley, and heeded not his teachings; and till very recent years both he and his teachings have remained utterly forgotten. And yet we write the closing lines of our work with the same conviction with which we commenced it some five years ago, that not only was Gerrard Winstanley a man worthy to be recalled to the memory of his fellow-countrymen, as one who deserved well of his day, of his generation and of his country, but that the intrinsic merits of his writings and teachings make them worthy of our most careful study, of our highest admiration, and of our most profound respect.

True, they have hitherto received but scant consideration; but this need neither surprise nor disturb us. The man in whose heart a new truth is born may be a benefactor of his species; but, as all history teaches us, if he have courage to proclaim it to the world, he must be prepared to meet the hatred, scoffing and abuse of the ignorant, the sneering contempt, if not bitter persecution, of the learned and highly placed upholders of already accepted beliefs and superstitions. More especially is this true of a social truth, of a truth which threatens the continuance of society in its accustomed paths, which threatens the continuance of some vested social wrong, of some deep-rooted and time-honoured social injustice, which, though it may be poisoning the springs of social life, necessarily finds favour in the eyes of those who are advantaged, or think they are advantaged, thereby. It was such a truth that meditation and reflection revealed to Gerrard Winstanley; and, as we have seen, he too met with the fate awaiting those who find themselves in advance of their times. As already pointed out, his memory has passed away, his teachings have remained unheeded. The seed he planted fell upon barren soil; but though so hardened by the withering frosts of ignorance, of that ignorance which is indeed “the curse of God,” as to seem but as a dead stone, the vivifying sun of knowledge may yet stir its dormant potency, recalling it to life, to spring up and to develop into a stately tree, yielding its life-giving fruits, offering the welcome protection of its branches to all seeking rest and shelter beneath its shade. To-day the thought that inspired Winstanley has again been proclaimed by one greater than Winstanley, and is slowly but surely remoulding the social thought of the world. Thanks to the genius of Henry George, the more thoughtful and ethical-minded of our race are gradually coming to realise that, to use Winstanley’s words—“True Commonwealth’s Freedom lies in the free enjoyment of the Earth”; and that if they would remove those remediable social ills which harass, haunt and warp our advancing civilisation, the use of the Earth and a share in the bounties and blessings of Nature must be secured to each and all upon equitable terms and conditions. Hence it is that we feel impelled to close our notice of the great Apostle of Social Justice and Economic Freedom of the Seventeenth Century with the following eloquent and soul-stirring words of his still greater successor of the Nineteenth Century, words which almost seem but as an echo of his own, even though many of us even to-day may have yet to learn to appreciate their full force, meaning and truth:

“In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious forces that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty. On the horizon the clouds begin to lower. Liberty calls to us again. We must follow her further; we must trust her fully. Either we must wholly accept her or she will not stay. It is not enough that men should vote; it is not enough that they should be theoretically equal before the law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities and means of life; they must stand on equal terms with reference to the bounties of nature. Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light! Either this, or darkness comes on, and the very forces that progress has evolved turn to powers that work destruction. This is the universal law. This is the lesson of the centuries. Unless its foundations be laid in justice the social structure cannot stand.”

END.