*The Agreement of the People*
/as presented to the Council of the Army at Putney on 28 October 1647/
*Initiating the **Putney Debates
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putney_Debates>***
_*An Agreement of the People for a firm and present peace upon grounds
of common right*_
Having by our late labours and hazards made it appear to the world at
how high a rate we value our just freedom, and God having so far owned
our cause as to deliver the enemies thereof into our hands, we do now
hold ourselves bound in mutual duty to each other to take the best care
we can for the future to avoid both the danger of returning into a
slavish condition and the chargeable remedy of another war; for, as it
cannot be imagined that so many of our countrymen would have opposed us
in this quarrel if they had understood their own good, so may we safely
promise to ourselves that, when our common rights and liberties shall be
cleared, their endeavours will be disappointed that seek to make
themselves our masters. Since, therefore, our former oppressions and
scarce-yet-ended troubles have been occasioned, either by want of
frequent national meetings in Council, or by rendering those meetings
ineffectual, we are fully agreed and resolved to provide that hereafter
our representatives be neither left to an uncertainty for the time nor
made useless to the ends for which they are intended. In order whereunto
we declare: ---
That the people of England, being at this day very unequally distributed
by Counties, Cities, and Boroughs for the election of their deputies in
Parliament, ought to be more indifferently proportioned according to the
number of the inhabitants; the circumstances whereof for number, place,
and manner are to be set down before the end of this present Parliament.
*II.*
That, to prevent the many inconveniences apparently arising from the
long continuance of the same persons in authority, this present
Parliament be dissolved upon the last day of September which shall be in
the year of our Lord 1648.
*III.*
That the people do, of course, choose themselves a Parliament once in
two years, viz. upon the first Thursday in every 2d March[1], after the
manner as shall be prescribed before the end of this Parliament, to
begin to sit upon the first Thursday in April following, at Westminster
or such other place as shall be appointed from time to time by the
preceding Representatives, and to continue till the last day of
September then next ensuing, and no longer.
*IV.*
That the power of this, and all future Representatives of this Nation,
is inferior only to theirs who choose them, and doth extend, without the
consent or concurrence of any other person or persons, to the enacting,
altering, and repealing of laws, to the erecting and abolishing of
offices and courts, to the appointing, removing, and calling to account
magistrates and officers of all degrees, to the making war and peace, to
the treating with foreign States, and, generally, to whatsoever is not
expressly or impliedly reserved by the represented to themselves: Which
are as followeth:
1. That matters of religion and the ways of God's worship are not at
all entrusted by us to any human power, because therein we cannot
remit or exceed a tittle of what our consciences dictate to be the
mind of God without wilful sin: nevertheless the public way of
instructing the nation (so it be not compulsive) is referred to
their discretion.
2. That the matter of impresting and constraining any of us to serve
in the wars is against our freedom; and therefore we do not allow it
in our Representatives; the rather, because money (the sinews of
war), being always at their disposal, they can never want numbers of
men apt enough to engage in any just cause.
3. That after the dissolution of this present Parliament, no person
be at any time questioned for anything said or done in reference to
the late public differences, otherwise than in execution of the
judgments of the present Representatives or House of Commons.
4. That in all laws made or to be made every person may be bound
alike, and that no tenure, estate, charter, degree, birth, or place
do confer any exemption from the ordinary course of legal
proceedings whereunto others are subjected.
5. That as the laws ought to be equal, so they must be good, and not
evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people.
These things we declare to be our native rights, and therefore are
agreed and resolved to maintain them with our utmost possibilities
against all opposition whatsoever; being compelled thereunto not only by
the examples of our ancestors, whose blood was often spent in vain for
the recovery of their freedoms, buffering themselves through fraudulent
accommodations to be still deluded of the fruit of their victories, but
also by our own woeful experience, who, having long expected and dearly
earned the establishment of these certain rules of government, are yet
made to depend for the settlement of our peace and freedom upon him that
intended our bondage and brought a cruel war upon us.
[1] I. e. in March in every other year.
*From: http://www.constitution.org/eng/conpur074.htm*
**
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