Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/56

 pointed out that in fact the two Houses were some three hundred Englishmen who were exercising as real rights of government over the rest of their countrymen as ever the king had done. They insisted on regarding the Houses as de facto a governing body, and quite distinct from the body governed. From such assumptions the Royalists drew unpleasant practical conclusions. If the people might on occasion revoke the grant of power they had made to a king, why could they not revoke the grant of power they had made to their representatives? In empowering the members of the House of Commons to act as their proxies, had the electors dreamed that they were empowering the members to do more than to sit and to act as Parliament men had acted time out of mind? Had the electors ever believed that they were yielding themselves up to the unrestrained wills and judgments of those whom they elected? If Parliament was the whole kingdom representatively, how did it come that non-freeholders and nine parts of the men of the kingdom were excluded from the choice of members? How had persons without votes conveyed any power to the members of the House of Commons? If the people had the right of self-preservation as against an act of the king that they judged destructive to themselves, why did they not enjoy the same right in respect to a parliamentary ordinance? The Houses were assuming to take measures for the nation’s pres-