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Village Politics had been a first essay in writing, not in the Johnsonian language, which was second nature to Hannah More, but in a tongue "understanded of the people," not attempting to reproduce their dialects, but to give simple, vigorous, plain English. The delight with which the little book was hailed, was an incitement to produce something more of the same kind. There were plenty of young people by this time in the Mendip district who could read, but there was absolutely nothing for them to read, easy to understand or inexpensive, besides the ballads and broadsheets of last dying speeches and the tracts which the disciples of Tom Paine and the Jacobinically inclined were endeavouring to circulate.

The only book hitherto written for the poor was