Editing Clapham Sect (section)

==Summary and context==
These were reformists and abolitionists, being contemporary terms as the 'Sect' was &ndash; until 1844 &ndash; unnamed. They figured and heard readings, sermons and lessons from prominent and wealthy [[Evangelical Anglican]]s who called for the [[Abolitionism|liberation of slaves]],<ref>Ann M.  Burton, "British Evangelicals, Economic Warfare and the Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1794–1810." ''Anglican and Episcopal History'' 65#2 (1996): 197–225. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/42611776 in JSTOR]</ref> abolition of the [[History of slavery|slave trade]] and the [[Prison reform|reform of the penal system]], and recognised and advocated other cornerstone civil-political rights and socio-economic rights. Defying the [[status quo]] of [[labour exploitation]] and consequent vested interests in the legislature was laborious and was motivated by their [[Christian faith]] and concern for [[social justice]] and fairness for all human beings. Their most famous member was [[William Wilberforce]], widely commemorated in monuments and credited with hastening the end of the slave trade.

Electoral and other political rights were a main cause of all [[Radicals (UK)|Radicals]] then their Northern successors the [[Chartism|Chartists]], their shared earliest success being the [[Great Reform Act 1832]]. Many of the other key rights saw a comparative context in treatises of the [[Age of Enlightenment]], and [[Age of Revolutions]]. France's 1789 [[Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen]], together with the 1689 [[English Bill of Rights]], the 1776 [[United States Declaration of Independence]], and the 1789 [[United States Bill of Rights]], inspired, in large part, the 1948 [[United Nations]] [[Universal Declaration of Human Rights]].<ref>Douglas K. Stevenson (1987), ''American Life and Institutions'', Stuttgart (Germany), p. 34</ref>