Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/169

 Commons absolute because in accord with the national will. They were forced to seek other expedients to preserve the natural rights of the people. The Remonstrance represented but a step in the evolution of Leveller ideas; but, even so, two and a half centuries of democratic thinking have hardly brought us a finer ideal of the relation of government and people.

The radicals based their democratic ideals on their faith in the dignity and worth of the individual. Appreciating the value of the individual man, they thought it inconceivable that he could be by right subject to any power arbitrary enough to enslave him; and to emphasize his dignity they pictured him as voluntarily placing himself under a government so limited that it might not harm him. On perceiving that this theory did not correspond to the facts, they summoned people and House of Commons to confide in each other and to coöperate as principal and agent in making all powers in England derive their authority from the assent of a nation composed of individuals—every man made in the image of God.

Two years before Lilburne’s collision with the Lords, two similar cases had arisen involving principles much like those in Lilburne’s case.

Colonel King had been fined by the Lords in May of 1644, for alleged arbitrariness in his dealings with Lord Willoughby in Lincolnshire.