- Museum number
- 1868,0808.5060
- Title
- Object: Confucius the Second; or, a new sun rising in the Asiatic world!
- Description
-
Fox as the rising sun, his head, smiling, satisfied, fills the circle of the sun, whose rays are shed over the sky, and fall upon two groups of persons divided by the River Ganges. On the nearer side (right) a group of Indians make obeisance to the sun with gestures of ecstatic gratitude: a kneeling prince with a feathered turban, bends low with his hands on his breast; he is "The unfortunate Prince, Cheit Sing" (words etched on the lower margin). Next him are four kneeling women, three young, one old; they hold out their arms with expressions of gratitude towards Fox; the most prominent turns to point out their benefactor to two young children who kneel at her side. They are "The plundered Princesses, the Begums of Oude". Behind them (right) an Indian bows his head to the ground. He is the foremost of a crowd whose arms are stretched out towards Fox, the faces of some being Nubian in type. Behind and approaching this group is a procession headed by Burke and North each on an elephant. Burke (left), dressed as a Jesuit, as in BMSat 6205, points at Fox, looking towards North, who stretches out his right arm towards the rising sun; in his left hand he holds a book, "Sublime and Beaut[iful]", to show that he is the author of "A Philosophical Enquiry. . ." . The howdah cloth of North's elephant is inscribed "Plunder restored 1[7]83", on the animal's back is a bale of goods. Behind Burke and North, apparently mounted on elephants, stand two men blowing trumpets to which are attached fringed banners, as in BMSat 6276, one inscribed "The Trumpet shall soun'd in the East and man shall be called to Judgment."
On the farther side of the river a procession of "plunderers", officers of the East India Company, being led by a man with an axe on his shoulder, he holds a chain which is attached to the wrists of the victims. They are "Plunderers doomed to Execution when the new Sun [Fox] gains his Meridian." 12 December 1783
Etching
- Production date
- 1783
- Dimensions
-
Height: 277 millimetres
-
Width: 351 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', V, 1935)
An exceptional print in its (apparent) defence of the India Bills; the dress of Burke, and Fox as the sun ascending, suggest an ironical intention. Cf. BMSat 6239, &c. It is based on Burke's speech of 1 Dec, which he had printed (Walpole, 'Letters', xiii. 118, 1 Feb. 1784), in which ('inter alia') he expounded the wrongs of the Begums of Oude and of "Cheit Sing", and attacked Hastings, describing the rule of the East India Company's servants "as oppressive, irregular, capricious, unsteady, rapacious, and peculating despotism, with a direct disavowal of obedience to any authority at home and without any fixed maxim, principle or rule of proceeding to guide them in India. . . ." 'Parl. Hist.' xxiii. 1312-86. For the India Bill see BMSat 6271, &c.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.5060