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For centuries the Established Church had preached to the poor the duties of obedience. But it was so distanced from them – and its distance was rarely greater than in this time of absenteeism and plural livings – that its homilies had ceased to have much effect.

‘There is the great mistake’ – weavers, who wove cloth when they themselves were in rags, were forcibly educated in the vitiating error of the orthodox political economy.

They offered a direct negative to the homilies of ‘supply-and-demand’.

even before Paine had adopted so truculent a tone, his writings had served as a touchstone to distinguish different emphases among reformers

To the founding fathers of the United States, breaking free from the trammels of precedent, it seemed sufficient to find certain truths ‘self-evident’.