Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/164

 first—the awakening of the people to a sense of the oppressions they suffered and of their right to freedom; for, of course, in the Remonstrance the people of England spoke only figuratively to the Commons through the mouths of a few advanced thinkers. Overton in his Defiance Against All Arbitrary Usurpations bewailed the fact that usurpations had continued so long that the people were ignorant of their rights, and persecuted men who strove to establish them.

In the spring and summer of 1646, two things appeared essential to the freeing of the people. First, the people must stick close to the House of Commons. Second, the House of Commons must itself recognize the duty intrusted to it by the people. The first essential had been emphasized by the radicals in the contest over the City Remonstrance. The second is the theme of the Remonstrance Of Many Thousand Citizens.

This book is worth a very careful analysis. A seventeenth-century House of Commons could treat it only as a libel of the deepest dye. Yet through