print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.9375
- Title
- Object: Agitating the popular humbug or " the bill and nothing but the bill"!-
- Description
-
Four street-sellers give their views on Reform. An Irish milk-woman (left), wearing her yoke, stands with hands on hips looking to the right; she has put down her pails and a costermonger's ass drinks from one of them. The costermonger, a ragged ruffian, sits sideways on the ass's hind-quarters, behind the empty panniers, a spiked bludgeon in his hand. A ragged slut selling ballads and matches has two fighting and squalling infants in a shawl at her back. A stout baker's man leans against his big basket of loaves, thumping his fist on his hand, scowling to the left, while two ragged boys (right) help themselves. The baker: 'I maintain that Reform is necessary—! I say that the people are starving—and that every Mother's son ought to have his loaf!— The woman, holding up a bundle of matches, answers: 'Aye! to be sure! and Vv should not me and mine 'ave a Voice in the State? Vhat good of hedecation else?—'. The costermonger says to the milk-woman: 'They tells me as how Asses will be a deal more plenty if this here Reform passes—But I say, Missus, they says as how the Lords won't like the Bill.—' She answers: 'They Von't like um! No No! What cares they for the Rights of the People? Don't l sarve urn with the best crame o' the Land, and don't they hate the sight o' the Bill for 't?—' 20 May 1831
Lithograph
- Production date
- 1831
- Dimensions
-
Height: 259 millimetres
-
Width: 338 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', XI, 1954)
A satire on "vox Populi vox Dei", cf. No. 16818. The elections, almost over, gave a strong majority for Reform; resistance was only possible in the Lords. "The Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill" was a potent cry, popularized by The Times' ('Hist. of the Times., 1935, p. 274), but started by Rintoul in the 'Spectator'. Fox-Bourne, 'English Newspapers', ii. 49.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.9375