Of Doyle's political plates during these early years, none is more interesting to the American reader than the few rare occasions upon which he seeks to express the British impression of the United States. One of these, "The Land of Liberty," appeared in 1847. A lean and lanky, but beardless, Uncle Sam tilts lazily back in his rocking-chair, a six-shooter in his hand, a huge cigar between his teeth. One foot rests carelessly upon a bust of Washington, which he has kicked over. The other is flung over the back of another chair in sprawling insolence. In the ascending clouds of smoke appear the Stars and Stripes, surrounded by a panorama of outrages, duels, barroom broils, lynch law, etc., and above them all, the contending armies of the Mexican war, over whom a gigantic devil hovers, his hands extended in a malignant benediction. A closely analogous cartoon of this same year by Richard Doyle sharply satirized Louis Philippe as the "Napoleon of Peace," and depicted in detail the unsatisfactory condition of European affairs as seen from the British vantage ground. As a consequence of this cartoon Punch was for some time excluded from Paris.
The Great Sea Serpent of 1848.
From the collection of the New York Public Library.
From 1848 onward the cartoons in Punch look upon the world politics from a constantly widening angle. Indeed, the same remark holds good for the comic organs not only of England, but of France, Germany, Italy, and the other leading nations as well. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century the international relations of the leading powers may be followed almost without a break in the cartoons of Punch and Judy, of the Fliegende Blätter and the Kladderadatsch, of Don Pirlone, of the Journal pour Rire, of Life and Puck and Judge, and the countless host of their followers and imitators.
A Bird's Eye View of Europe in 1830.
From the collection of the New York Public Library.