in the two Acts of 1720 and 1744. Of course, combina-
tion went on; industries were small, often very localized,
especially in London, and the journeymen met together in
their friendly societies and taverns. Among them were
many who were literate, and the violent press attacks on the
government in The Craftsman or Fog's Weekly -- the rabid
Jacobite paper -- first stimulated, and then focused, their
sense of grievance with life. But again, the cheap food and
good years of trade assuaged their animosity and kept it in
bounds. The periods of most widespread public hostility to
Walpole's government coincide with bad harvests or de-
pressed trade. Nevertheless, the instability of their politi-
cal opinions in a world without organized public order
was a factor to be reckoned with, especially so as they
still possessed importance in London politics. By their
votes, they confronted Walpole with a hostile Lord Mayor
at the most critical moment of his life -- the Excise crisis
of 1733.

Below the artisans and journeymen were the mass of
London's population, the hordes of labourers whose liveli-
hood depended almost entirely on casual employment and
who were liable to be dismissed at will. Their lives were a
chequered pattern of modest affluence and abject poverty.
Their hard, lean faces and shrunken bodies gave a sense of
bitter despair to many of Hogarth's prints of London life.
Among them, philanthropists such as Coram and Ogle-
thorpe laboured to save the children from crime and whore-
dom. Their plight stirred the heart of all benevolent men
and towards them the mission of Wesley and his disciples
was directed. But to the politician they were a nightmare.
To the desperate poor, a riot was a clarion call to their
instinct to survive, for in the burning and looting there was
many a windfall. It mattered little to them what the riot
was about and unscrupulous politicians never had difficulty
in rousing the mob. Of course, the real poor had no political

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