from III - Absolutism and Revolution in the Seventeenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
The Leveller movement
The Levellers were a political movement united around the programme of the first Agreement of the People (3 November 1647; Wolfe 1944, pp. 223–34). That Agreement is the first proposal in history for a written constitution based on inalienable natural rights. It embodied three essential principles. The first, though ambiguously expressed, was taken by contemporaries to be that any property qualification for the franchise should be abolished: even the poor should have the right to vote. The second was that the representative assembly should have supreme authority in making law, appointing magistrates, and conducting foreign policy: the king, if any, was to be accountable to his subjects. The third principle was that the powers of government be limited by the principles of natural justice. This meant, first, that all laws must apply equally to all subjects: there must be no privileged estate or corporation. This also implied the illegality of all monopolies. Second, all subjects had the right to freedom of conscience, entitling them to dissent from any established state religion. This also implied a right to freedom of expression. Third, conscription was banned: subjects could not be compelled to serve in an army if they disapproved of the cause for which it was to fight, although they could be compelled to pay taxes. Finally, all laws ‘must be good, and not evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people’. This implied both the right of juries to refuse to enforce bad law, and an ultimate right of revolution: if the people's representatives betrayed their trust, the nation as a whole could assert its ultimate sovereignty.
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