to eye with Walpole, for they believed in plain, fair and
honest dealing, and the control of government by Parlia-
ment -- not the reverse, which was Walpole's way. They both
envied and distrusted the great chartered companies and
felt increasingly that they were a hindrance to trade. What
loyalty they had to Walpole was strained by the opposition's
frequent exposure of corruption in high places. Their natural
suspicion was aroused by the talk of England's interests
being sacrificed to Hanover. They were devoted readers of
The Craftsman, the vigorous opposition newspaper, which
played on their prejudices; some were taken in and voted
Tory, most of them kept to the politics of their fathers.
Their fervid isolationism and thirst for empire awaited the
voice of Chatham, for the gulf between their world and
Bolingbroke's -- who attempted to turn them into Tories --
was too great to be bridged.

The craftsmen and artisans -- the journeymen and appren-
tices of the great livery companies of London -- were the bridge
between the rich and the poor. They worked long hours --
fourteen was common -- for a modest wage which, with the
additions made by their wives and children, raised them
well above the subsistence level, so long as trade was good.
But trade was fickle and the chance of hunger and poverty
threaded their lives with anxiety. Also, the changes in in-
dustrial organization -- the decay of the guild, the spread
of a free labour market, the introduction of labour-saving
machinery -- increased the feeling that they were being dis-
possessed. Until 1725 they still enjoyed a measure of poli-
tical power in London, but this was diminished by Walpole,
who disliked the spread of opposition views, both Tory and
Radical, among them. He disliked even more their tendency
to combine in order to insist on their rights under Tudor
industrial legislation. It is true that Parliament believed that
the artisan had a right to a fixed minimum wage and this it
tried to uphold, but it condemned outright combination

-15-