The Craftsman‘s favorite weapon was the most effective in the Augustan arsenal, satire.  An angry Member of Parliament descrived how the paper’s writers “shot their poison in the dark and scattered it under allegories in vile libels.”  Walpole’s system was depicted as a unique form of government, the Robinocracy or Robinarchy.  In a “Persian Letter,” The Craftsman of October 18, 1729, has Usbeck, a traveler to England, writing home of this strange form of government, made up of three orders: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, in which all three are dependent upon the Robinarch, or chief ruler, who, although legally a minister and creature of the Prince, is “in reality a sovereign, as despotic, arbitrary a sovereign as this part of the world affords.”  The Robinarch and his associates come from plebian stock and have few estates, yet “he rules by Money, the root of all evils, and founds his iniquitous dominion in the corruption of the people.”  The Robinarch secures to his will the deputies in the assembly as well as the Prince.  In the past this may have been a difficult task, but modern Robinarchs are skillful in encouraging luxury and extravagance, which, together with the disbursement of honors, titles, preferments, and pensions, help make the Robinarch’s task an easier one. ~Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke & His Circle