Eliza Filby and Clifford Longley (“Margaret Thatcher forgot Original Sin”, 21 March) between them perform a signal service in reminding us that Mrs Thatcher’s belief that “human beings were perfectible by their own efforts” had antecedents in Pelagianism. However, when Mr Longley adds that perfectibility for the Iron Lady was “hard work”, he evokes another set of connections, not only to Wesley but to Benjamin Franklin. It was after two years or so of Mrs T. that I was struck by how presciently she was characterised in D.H. Lawrence’s distinctive essay on Franklin and his writings. Lawrence wrote that we do all like to corral our fellow-men – round them up inside the “barbed-wire enclosure of freedom and make them work”. &l