Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/22

6 political viewpoints, becomes a valuable and self-correcting source of information.

The limitations of the material, however, are great. After one has recorded the obtainable facts of the Leveller movement, he feels he has told what we may know of it, rather than what we should like to know. In the following chapters John Lilburne is assigned a greater space than probably his comparative importance in his party would justify; but the surviving material naturally groups itself around his robust and active personality. We can only conjecture who devised the ideas, the manifestos, the machinery of the Leveller party; but we know that John Lilburne was the Leveller incarnate. In his doings and his martyrdoms for principle John Lilburne illustrated and popularized the ideas of the Levellers.

The method of treatment may appear unduly partial to the Levellers. In spirit the work is frankly an appreciation, although a prepossession in favor of the Levellers has not hindered the fair statement of any evidence to their discredit at all worthy of consideration. From the days of the Levellers themselves down to the present time hostile comments have been frequent. Impartial estimates of their part in the political struggle of the English Revolution may be found in modern historians. Here the attempt is to show what is best in the men and in their ideals; to indicate the contribution they made to the world’s political ideas.