Editing London Corresponding Society (section)

===London's sans-culottes===
Despite such notables, the government were assured by their most trusted informer, "'Citizen' Groves", that the real body of the club was made of "the very lowest order of society".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Birley |first1=Sir Robert |title=The English Jacobins 1789–1802 |date=1924 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=London |page=9}}</ref> They took little persuading that within the LCS English [[Jacobins]] were leading on the equivalent to the [[sans-culottes]] of the [[Revolutionary sections of Paris|revolutionary Paris sections]]. Some of the working class membership did take the republican doctrines of Paine to their extreme, posing the claims of an absolute political democracy against those of monarchy and aristocracy.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Thompson |first1=E. P. |title=The Making of the English Working Class |date=1964 |publisher=Pantheon |location=New York |isbn=9780394703220 |pages=156–157}}</ref>

Of these radical democrats, the most renowned was [[Thomas Spence]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Worrall|first=David|title=Radical CultureDiscourse, Resistance and Surveillance, 1790–1820|publisher=Wayne State University Press|year=1992|isbn=0814324525}}</ref> Originally from [[Newcastle upon Tyne|Newcastle]], where he had protested the [[enclosure]] of [[common land|commons]], Spence re-issued as ''The Real Rights of Man'' a penny pamphlet he had produced in 1775, ''Property in Land Every One's Right''.<ref>{{Citation|last=Spence|first=Thomas|title=Property in Land Every One's Right|date=1775|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/england/britdem/people/spence/property/property.htm|publisher=Thomas Spence|language=en|access-date=2021-02-27}}</ref> His vision was of a society based on common ownership of land administered democratically, by men and women alike, at the parish level. In 1797, in response to [[Thomas Paine]]'s ''Agrarian Justice,'' he wrote ''The Rights of Infants'' which, in the course of vindicating the right of children to freedom from want and abuse, proposed an [[Unconditional basic income|unconditional and universal basic income]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Thomas Spence|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/england/britdem/people/spence/index.htm|access-date=2021-02-27|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>