ABSTRACT

Erasmus Darwin's critique of the maximization of profits extends to an attack on the enclosure of small farmers arable land for cattle pasturage, or to grow grain for the alcohol industry. Like most of his lunar colleagues, Darwin ardently supported the American Revolution and the early stages of the French one. In 1793, Darwin's all French sympathies had put him directly in the government's line of fire. In 1791, full of Loves still-anonymous success, he had co-founded the Derby society for political information, whose manifesto demanding full adult male suffrage was sent to the French national assembly and then published in the Morning Chronicle. Masonry's part in the American Revolution is still much debated: the existence of an Anti-Masonic party as a major political grouping in the late 1820s suggests that some still saw it as wrestling for the nation's soul, after a birth whose Masonic elements certainly include such leading figures as Cosmopolite Benjamin Franklin and Washington.