All this complicated subject of commercial relations, the advantages and disadvantages of foreign trade, and the history of the glove market, will be treated separately and in detail in the chapter which follows. For the present, let us keep to our main issue—the vicissitudes in general of gloves and glove-makers in the leading glove city of the world during the stormy years of the eighteenth century. From 1737 to 1746 we learn that the life of the Grenoble glovers—on the surface, at least—was comparatively monotonous. The manufacture made some progress, but the possibilities of expansion were not such as to stimulate very keenly those at the head of things. The masters and the workers lived without disagreement, apparently; the time-honored rules of the craft continued to be observed on both sides. In the Corporation a public magistrate managed the affairs of the association; the glovers themselves, it would seem, being too indifferent to take an active part. Prosperity appears to have been just about commensurate with the needs of the Corporation. And yet, beneath this evident torpor, a vast inquietude was moving, like an earthquake under the sea. A fermentation of social discontent—bred by the philosophy of the times, by the glaring disparity between the ruling class and the working people, the latters’ distrust of the morals and the assumed authority of the former, by the teachings of freemasonry and the trades unions—was slowly gathering momentum. In working centres—conspicuously in Grenoble and throughout the Dauphiné—the wealthy people were constantly framing remonstrances, begging the Royal Council to curb the mutterings of the proletariat. The outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, in 1756, increased the industrial depression by cutting off a part of the foreign demand, particularly for gloves, and by calling away from France many men for the army. In 1759 a heavy tax was imposed by the crown upon skins. This proved the last straw. It meant that skins for tawing were hardly to be had, and thus the glovers were without materials for their manufacture. Their irritation was acute, and the parliament of Grenoble was obliged to carry before the king the united protestations of the _Corporation des Gantiers_.