The Case of Opposition Stated, Between the Craftsman and the People

Book excerpt: Simon Varey's edition of William Arnall's Case of Opposition Stated (1732) stands to enrich the ongoing discussion of politics and propaganda in the British paper wars of the 1720s and 1730s. The pamphlet, funded by Sir Robert Walpole's administration, attempted to undermine the credibility of the opposition spearheaded by Viscount Bolingbroke and William Pulteney. Arnall's point-by-point rebuttal of a recent number of Bolingbroke and Pulteney's newspaper, the Craftsman, had a particular urgency about it: the Craftsman's printer had recently been convicted for seditious libel, and the Craftsman was reveling in the publicity, selling more copies as it intensified its attacks on Walpole and George II. Arnall's blistering polemic constituted the administration's most forceful attempt to turn the debate against the opposition. The edition includes a scholarly introduction and notes as well as transcriptions of several numbers of the Craftsman and sections of Dr. Varey's previously unpublished manuscript on the Craftsman. The late Dr. Varey published widely on eighteenth-century subjects.