righteous Law, whereby to keep a Common-wealth in peace, when one
sort shall be suffered to speak and not another, as you deal with
us, to pass sentence and execution upon us, before both sides be
heard to speak. This principle in the forehead of your Laws
foretells destruction to this Common-wealth. For it declares that
the Laws that follow such refusal are selfish and thievish and full
of murder, protecting all that get money by their Laws, and
crushing all others.

"The writer hereof does require Mr. Drake, and he is a Parliament
man, therefore a man counted able to speak rationally, to plead
this cause of digging with me.[115:1] And if he show a just and
rational title that Lords of Manors have to the Commons, and that
they have a just power from God to call it their right, shutting
out others, then I will write as much against it as ever I wrote
for this cause. [A heavy forfeit, truly!] But if I show by the Law
of Righteousness that the poorest man hath as good a title and just
right to the Land as the richest man, and that undeniably the Earth
ought to be a Common Treasury of Livelihood for all without
respecting persons; then I shall require no more of Mr. Drake but
that he would justify our cause of digging, and declare abroad that
the Commons ought to be free to all sorts, and that it is a great
trespass before the Lord God Almighty for one to hinder another of
his liberty to dig the earth, that he might feed and clothe himself
with the fruits of his labor thereupon freely, without owning any
Land Lord or paying any Rent to any person of his own kind."

After this perfectly safe challenge, he continues:

"I sent this following answer to the Arrest in writing into