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Untitled Article
their laws , estates , liberties and lives shall be more secure in the bands of mercenaries , than in their own ? Who can think his
jestate , his liberty or his life in afety , when he knows they ; are all at the mercy and will of hirelings , that are led by no otbfer
motive than that of profit or pay to serve them ; and may be led by any proposal or temptation , of greater profit or pay , to desert them ?
All ages have afforded sad experiments of trusting their strength in the hands of mercenary armies ; most nations who have kept them , at least in their own bowels , having
been devoured by them . Di d not the Egyptian king , by trusting the arms in hirelings ' haads , lose both his crown and life , and brought the people to be slaves to the Mamalukes for near two hundred
years ? Was not the famous conu monwealth of Rome ruined and enslaved by their negligent permission of Julius Caesar ( upon his advantage of long continuing general ) to form a mercenary
army ? Did not the inhabitants of Rhegium perish by the hands of the Roman legion left to be their mercenary defenders ? And were not our neighbours of Aln
-• terdam lately very near th « loss of their estates and liberties by their own mercenary araiy i And ay the Levellers , the people have less reason to trust to mercenaries ,
to defend their country from foreigners , than they have to preserve their estates and liberties from domestic oppression . How can their valour or fidelity be depended upon , when a small stipend only obliges them to ei ther ? * # 4 * if they be conquered on *
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day , they are ready to serve the conqueror next day , it being their professed principle to serve where they can have best and most cer * tain pay . But , say the Levellers
when the people , who are owners of a country , are disposed into a military form , they fight pro arts etfocis ; they are sensible that they have more at stake than a daily stipend , and are in no hopes to
better their conditions , by division amongst themselves , or by betrayirig their country to foreigners . Thus , say they , is it prudent and safe for the people to be masters of their own arms ; and to be
commanded , in the use of them , by a part of themselves , ( that is , their parliaments ) whose interest is the same with theirs . * These four foregoing maxims containing the sum of all the Levellers' doctrine about our
government in externals ; ( whoas principles , without naming one of them , have been rendered so pro * digious , and of such dangerous consequence ;) but let the reader judge , whether the liberty , happiness and security of every Eng- * lishman be not sought in the endeavours to establish those
foundations of equal justice and safety ; neither can they be charged herein with novelty or inconstancy , ths same fundamentals of government having been claimed by our ancestors , as their right , for many hundred years .
And the late long parliament proposing the same to the people , as they things to be defended by the late war ; alleging , that the king had set up courtiers to govern , instead of laws ^ by imprisoning at pleasure , and during pleasure ; and that he had at *
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Principles of the Leveller * , 165 t . % t
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1811, page 27, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2412/page/27/
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