> Maybe they thought that English people would be offended by the implication of
> backwardness though it does stand up historically. Witch trials died off in
> the early eighteenth century, and the legislation was repealed in 1736. Isaac
> Newton (having taken over at the Royal Mint) worked out that as many as 20 per
> cent of all coins in circulation were forged, and in 1699 had forger William
> Chaloner tried and hung. The Cragg Coiners were hung in 1770 and
> 1775.
Thinking about this missing passage (but without having consulted MEGA, or anything like that), I think it's most likely an editorial intervention of Engels, which Fowkes didn't reverse when he produced his new translation. As I understand things, the Aveling and Moore translation was based on the 1883 German text, but that Engels made some interventions along the way. Fowkes in his edition says that some of Engels' deletions were restored. But apparently not this one.
If this is right, then it's consistent with everything people have reported on this thread so far: the passage appears in all three German editions (1867, 1873, 1883), in the French translation (which was produced in 1872-5, based on a modified text of the 1867 edition), and in the Spanish translation (which was presumably made from the 1883 German edition, or some close descendant of it). But it doesn't appear in either of the English versions.
Chris