It is evident that there was, in 1800, casuistry enough in the theology of all the available English churches to reinforce the manufacturer’s own sense of moral self-esteem.
‘in training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automaton’
a movement which succeeded, very largely, in extirpating this insidious ‘violation’ of the Lord’s Day
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.
