- Museum number
- 1868,0808.8358
- Title
- Object: A peep into the green bag of the secret committee of magnifiers.
- Description
-
Members of Parliament, some with large magnifying glasses, are grouped round a cloth-covered table on which exhibits are displayed; they are grotesquely drawn and poorly characterized. One (? Liverpool) superintends two witnesses at the foot of the table (left), a black servant and a woman, fat, jolly, and disreputable, on whose shoulder he puts a hand; in his left hand is a large stuffed stocking inscribed 'Powder Magazine'. She says: "I assure you (Sir) on my Honour!! all I say is true, I know a great deal more, but cannot think of it at Present!!!" Her interrogator says: "I belive all you say and more too!" The servant: "When Misse know more I shall." A man beside him stares at the woman through a huge magnifying glass, saying, "She is a Wapping Landlady." Objects on the table are a row of toy soldiers wearing caps of liberty placarded: 'Army for taken [sic] the Bank & Tower'. Other objects are a large mortar resting on a pestle, ticketed 'Dr Watson's Morter'; a pair of braces: 'Evans's Gallowses' [cf. No. 8039], a syringe or squirt, an awl, a bottle of 'opium', a saw, a model of a small vessel or yacht, with ink-pots and an hour-glass. One of the committee (? Castlereagh), sitting opposite the ship and holding up his glass, turns to say to a colleague: "No doubt this Ship was intended to convey Buanaparte from Sl Helena [cf. No. 12592]." The other, staring through his glass, exclaims angrily: "D—m this Glass it do not Magnify half big enough." A sixth member sits looking through his glass with his hand on a paper: 'Gagging Bill'. He has some resemblance to Canning who defended the Bill. On the extreme right an ugly and bloated member of the Committee (Curtis) stands on a stool holding the shoulders of a little man (Wilberforce) who stands in front of him, using an even bigger glass than the others. He exclaims: "Lord! what a Monstrous Morter the Regent Bomb [see No. 12799, &c.] is nothing to compare to it." Curtis says: "Oh what a dreadful sight." On the ground on the extreme left is a large 'Green Bag' from which papers project, one inscribed 'Spencean Plan'; beside this is a book: 'the History of Jack The Giant Killer'.
27 February 1817
Etching, partly hand-coloured
- Production date
- 1817
- Dimensions
-
Height: 248 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', IX, 1949)
After the attack on the Regent (see No. 12864), Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, placed papers (in a green bag) relating to sedition and unrest, and a Secret Committee (also called the Green Bag Committee) was chosen by ballot in each House to report on them. That of the Commons included Castlereagh, Canning, Wilberforce, Curtis, and members of the Opposition. The Report (19 Feb.) referred to societies with delegates, inflammatory placards and speeches, the Spencean doctrines (corporate land-tenure), designs on the Tower and Bank (as grotesquely attempted by the Watsons on 2 Dec), and attempts to seduce the army. The Spa Fields rioters (Spenceans) had, according to Castle, see No. 12885, ammunition consisting of 60 or 70 bullets in an old stocking. ('State Trials', xxxii. 275.) Thomas Evans (see vol. vii), arrested 9 Feb. ('Examiner', 1816, p. 111), was Librarian to the Society of Spencean Philanthropists, an associate of the Watsons, and one of a projected Committee of Public Safety. 'Parl. Deb.' xxxv. 438 ff., 590 ff., 765; Bamford, 'Passages in the Life of a Radical', 1905, ii. 27-30; 'Life of Wilberforce', 1839, iv. 308, 314-16; Wallas, 'Life of Place', 1918, pp. 120-6; 'State Trials', xxxii. 212. On 24 Feb. Sidmouth presented the Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill (valid to 1 July) in the Lords and Castlereagh the (temporary) Seditious Meetings Bill (Gagging Bill) which revived the restrictions of 1795 (see No. 8687, &c.). Cf. No. 9369 by Gillray on the Secret Committee of 1799. For the Green Bag see also Nos. 12871, 12876, 12887, 13000. A more notorious Green Bag contained the case against Queen Caroline in 1820.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.8358
