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senators 5 that should consult and debate of the necessity and conveniency of all laws , levies of monies , war and peace , and then propose all to the great assembly
of the people ' s deputies to resolve ; that so the proposing and resolving power , not being in the same assembly , all faction and private interests may be avoided which may possibly arise in a single council , vested with the sole sovereign law-making power . This second doctrine of the Levellers had been fit for all England to
have asserted some years since , and then so many fatherless and "widows had not now been weeping for their lost husbands and fathers in Jamaica and other foreign countries ; nor had so many fami .
lies been ruined , nor England impoverished by the loss of trade , occasioned by the Spanish war , begun and prosecuted upon pri - vate interests or fancies , without advice or consent of the people in parliament . III . The Levellers assert it , as another principle , that every man , of what quality or condition ,
place or office whatsoever , ought to be equally subject to the laws . Every man , sa } r they , high and low , rich and poor , must be accountable to the laws , and either obey them , or suffer the penalties ordained for the transgressors .
There ought to be no more respedt of persons , in the execution of the laws , than is with God himself , if the law be transgressed . Ho regard should be had who is the offender , but of what kind , nature and degree is the offence . It is destructive to the end of a government by law , that any magistrate , or other , should be ex-« 9 &pt from the obedience or justice
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of the laws . It dissolves the g 6 * -vernmentj ipsofactoy and exposeth all the people to rapine and op * pression , without security of their persons and estates , for which th *
laws are intended ; therefore , say they , great thieves and little must alike to the gallows , and the meanest man as readily and easily obtain justice and relief of any injury and oppression against the greatest , as he shall do against the
lowest of the people ; and there - fore , say they , it ought not to be in the power of any single person to defend himself from the impartial stroke of the laws , or to per * vert justice by force ; and that brings in their fourth principle ,
viz . — IV . That the people ought to be formed into such a constant military posture , by and under the commands of their parliament , that , by their own strength ^ they may be nble to compel every man
to be subject to the laws , and to defend their country from foreigners , and enforce right and justice from them , upon all emergent occasions . No government can stand without force of arms , to subdue such . as shall rebel
against the laws-, and to defend their territories from the rapine and violence of strangers ; and the people must either hire mercenary soldiers , to be the guardians of their laws and their
country , or take the care upon themselves , by disposing themselves into a posture of arms , that may make them ready and able
to be their own guard . Now , say the Levellers , it is neither prudent nor safe that the people ' s arms should be put into mercenary soldiers' hands . What reason can induce any people to believe that
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26 Principles of the Levellers , 165 $ ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1811, page 26, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2412/page/26/
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