The ideas of the French Encyclopædists, the writings of Rousseau, and the revolt of the American colonists, had aroused a belief in social equality, and the “natural” rights of man, and this belief Cartwright championed till his death. His early pamphlets, beginning with “Legislative Rights of the Commonalty Vindicated,” (1777) are heavy reading to-day, but in them Cartwright argued for all the famous “six points” of the People’s Charter of fifty years later--Universal Manhood Suffrage, Annual Parliaments, Vote by Ballot, Abolition of Property Qualification for Parliamentary Candidates, Payment of Members, and Equal Electoral Districts. He even uses the modern phrase in urging “one man one vote.” Unlike Thomas Paine, and many of the “Radical Reformers,” Cartwright pleads for political democracy as the natural outcome of the Christian faith, maintaining that “No man can have a right sense and belief of Christianity who denies the equality of all conditions of men.” Incidentally, challenged on the point of why not Votes for Women? Cartwright could only fall back on certain passages in the Bible to justify his objection to Women’s Enfranchisement. Nothing was more abhorrent to his mind than the notion that government was a matter for “experts,” an exclusive affair for persons with specially trained intelligences. “Of all the errors to which mankind have ever submitted their understandings,” he wrote, “there is no one to be more lamented than that of conceiving the business of civil government to be above the comprehension of ordinary capacities.” The poor, because of their very poverty, had a need for the vote and for parliamentary representation which the man of property could not experience. This Cartwright emphasised in a petition he presented to the House of Commons as late as 1820: And when your Honourable House shall further consider that the humblest mortal on earth is equally a co-heir of an immortality with the most exalted who now wears stars, or coronets, or crowns, your petitioner hopes that your Honourable House will rise superior to the mean thoughts and vulgar prejudices of the uncharitable among the wealthy, the ignorant, the interested, the vain, and the proud; and will acknowledge that, in reference to the respective claims of legislative representation by the poor and the rich, the poor have equal right but far more need. Enthusiasm and an entirely disinterested zeal for democracy kept the spirit of youth in Cartwright, and carried him at the age of 80 over a trial for sedition undisturbed. His zeal was not to be quenched. “Moderation in practice may be commendable,” he declared, “but moderation in principle is detestable. Can we trust a man who is moderately honest, or esteem a woman who is moderately virtuous?”