- Museum number
- 1981,U.252
- Title
- Object: A charm for a democracy, reviewed, analysed & destroyed Jany 1st 1799 to the confusion of its affiliated friends.
- Description
-
From the 'Anti-Jacobin Review', ii, frontispiece. [A coloured impression in B.M.L., P.P. 3596, where the plate is bound facing p.113, reversing the places of it and BMSat 9350.] The interior of the 'Cave of Despair', with demons put to flight by a ray of divine light from the letters 'I A H' in a triangle in the upper left corner of the design. Three wizards (right) in monkish robes tend a boiling cauldron inscribed:
'Eye of Straw & toe of Cade
Tylers bow & Kosiuskos blade
Russels liver tongue of cur
Norfolks boldness Foxs fur
Add thereto a tygers chauldron
For the ingredients of our cauldron'
Facing them (right) sits the Devil enthroned, holding a trident, with a three-headed scaly monster beside him; he says:
"Pour in Streams of Regal Blood
Then the Charm is firm & good."
Burning pamphlets feed the fire under the cauldron; they are being heaped up by Horne Tooke, from whose mouth issues a label: 'H - T. Tis time tis time tis time'. The next, stirring the contents, says "Thrice! and Twice King's Heads have fallen". The third (? Dr. Towers), [Perhaps Dr. Parr; Towers died 20 May 1799.] flourishing a broom-stick, says, "Thrice the Gallic Wolves have bayed"; he holds an open book: 'Lying Whore \ False Swearing'. Behind the wizards is a procession of the Opposition. The first three (abreast) are Bedford, Norfolk, and Lord Derby. They say respectively: "Where are they! - gone Pocketed the Church and Poorlands The Tythes next" [alluding to the basis of the Russell fortunes, see BMSat 8788, &c]; "Oh fallen Sovereingty degraded Counseller" [see BMSat 9168, &c]; "Poor joe is done No test or Corporation Acts" [cf. BMSat 7628, &c.]. The next three are Fox, Erskine, and Tierney; they say respectively: "Where can I hide my secluded Head" [see BMSat 9205, &c]; "Ah woe is me - poor I" [see BMSat 9246, &c]; "Would I had never spoke of the Licentiousness of the Press". Behind them is Burdett, saying, "What can I report to my Friends at the Bastile" [see BMSat 9341, &c.]. Behind there is an undifferentiated crowd entering the cave and headed by Thelwall holding a volume of 'Thelwalls Lectures' [see BMSat 8685], exclaiming, "Tm off to Monmouthshire". The procession is watched by a snaky monster (left). Above their heads and resting on clouds are small figures: the King, allegorically depicted, holding a serpent in each hand. Behind him are Pitt, saying, "Suspend their Bodies", (?) Grenville, (?) Windham, saying "Almighty God has been pleased to grant us a great Victory", and Kenyon, saying "Take them to the Kings Bench & Cold Bath fields" [see BMSat 9341]. The divine ray is inscribed: 'Afflavit Deus et dissipantur \ Your Destruction cometh as a Whirlwind \ Vengeance is ripe.'
Four winged demons fly off (right) in the smoke of the cauldron, three have collars on which their names are engraved: 'Robesp[ierre]', 'Voltaire', and 'Price'. An ape dressed as a newsboy, with 'Courier' on his cap (see BMSat 9194, &c), blows his horn towards the cauldron. Behind him, in the extreme right corner, is an open book: 'Analitical Review \ Fallen never to rise again.' The seditious papers which feed the fire are: 'Equali[ty]'; 'Blasphemy Sedition'; 'Sophims' [sic]; 'Heresy'; 'Atheism'; 'Resistance is Prudence'; 'Belshams History'; 'Whig Club'; 'The Vipers of Monarchy and Aristocracy will soon be strangled by the Infant Democracy' [cf. BMSat 8310, &c.]; 'Fraud'; 'Third of September' [see BMSat 8122]; 'Rights of Nature' [by Thelwall, attacking Burke, 1796]; '21st of January' [see BMSat 8297, &c.]; 'Frends Atheism'; 'Quigleys Dying Speech' [see BMSat 9189]; 'O'Connors Manifesto' [see BMSat 9245, &c.]; 'Oakleys Pyrology'; 'Deism'; 'Kings can do good Joel Barlow'; 'Uritaranism' [sic]; 'Sedition'; 'France is free'; 'Duty of Insurrection'; 'Darwins topsy turvy Plants and Animals Destruction' [cf. BMSat 9240]; 'Kings are S------TS' [serpents, as in Barlow's 'Conspiracy of Kings', pub. J. Johnson, 1792]; 'Political Liberty'. 1 February 1799
Etching
- Production date
- 1799
- Dimensions
-
Height: 295 millimetres
-
Width: 465 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VII, 1942)
A coloured impression in B.M.L., P.P. 3596, where the plate is bound facing p.113, reversing the places of it and BMSat 9350.
The particular application of this attack on the radical press and the Opposition may be the publication of 'An Oblique View of the Grand Conspiracy against Social Order; or a Candid Inquiry, tending to shew what Part the Analytical, the Monthly, the Critical Reviews, and the New Annual Register', have taken in that Conspiracy, a shilling pamphlet published by Wright and hailed with enthusiasm by the 'Anti-Jacobin Review', see BMSats 9240, 9243, in three articles by Gifford (Dec. 1798, Jan. and Feb. 1799), i. 691-2, ii. 75-7, 203-9. Tierney complained, 27 Dec. 1798, of the misrepresentation of a speech of his (on 22 Dec.) in 'The Times'. 'Parl. Hist.' xxxiv. 148 ff. Belsham's 'History of Great Britain from the Revolution to the Accession of the House of Hanover' was reviewed in the 'Anti-Jacobin Review', ii. 32-7, and denounced as ignorant and Jacobinical. Frend, a unitarian and radical, had been banished from Cambridge University for a supposedly seditious pamphlet. About 1798 Thelwall retired to a small farm in Wales. For Barlow see BMSat 8365 n. William Okeley's 'Pyrology, or the connexion between natural and moral philosophy: with a short disquisition on the origin of Christianity', was published in 1797 by J. Johnson. The attitude to the Polish Revolt (see BMSat 8607), implied in the association of Kosciusko with Cade, &c, is exceptional.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1753-1981
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1981,U.252
