The repugnance of the Regent to the economical measures which 1816.
Aversion of the Regent to retrenchment. were forced upon the ministry in 1816 is well-known. The people complained with every just reason of the pressure of taxes, which were levied, as they said, upon the industrious, to be squandered in extravagant salaries, sinecures, and unmerited pensions. They complained of the large standing army, which the Regent insisted to be necessary for the maintenance of “our position and high character among the European powers.” The prince’s aversion to the popular cry for retrenchment and reform is shown by one of George’s caricatures entitled, Sick of the Property Tax, or Ministerial Influenza, published by Fores on the 8th of March, 1816, where we see the ministers vomiting into a huge receptacle labelled “Budget,” the matter voided consisting of “Standing armies,” “Property tax,” “Increase of salaries,” and so on. The gouty, self-indulgent prince hobbles up to his ministers on a pair of crutches marked respectively, “More economy” and “Increase of income.” Under his arms he carries bundles of accounts, most of which relate to his own private expenditure, and are labelled, “Expenses of [Brighton] Pavilion,” of “Furniture,” “Drinking expenses.” “Aye, this comes,” he exclaims, “of your cursed pill economy, which you forced me to take a month back; no one knows what I have suffered from this economical spasm. I am afraid we shall all be laid up together.” On the table behind him lie the medicines which have been prescribed for him, certain pills labelled “Petitions against the property tax,” and a huge bolus ticketed “economy,” “to be taken immediately.” On the same subject a month later on is a sketch by an amateur, etched by the artist, bearing the title of Economical Humbug of 1816, or Saving at the Spiggot and Letting Out at the Bunghole. From a series of small vats, “Assessed taxes,” “Property tax,” “Customs,” “Excise,” and other streams of “supply,” are pouring into a huge vat labelled “The Treasury of J. Bull’s Vital Spirits.” Vansittart, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is carefully drawing off what he requires into a small bucket for the “Public Service.” “You see,” he says to Mr. Bull, who looks admiringly on, “I am not a quibbling pettifogger, I am a man of my word; for you see I have thrown away the great war spiggot, and have substituted a small peace one in its stead, which will cause an unknown saving to you.” This is all very well; but the gouty Regent has also tapped the vat on the other side, and draws off the supplies in a copious stream into a receptacle labelled, “Deficiencies of the Civil List.” His friends and boon companions are bringing up a fresh supply of empty vessels to be filled in their turn; one carries a barrel marked, “For household troops and standing army”; another is labelled, “Sinecures, places, and pensions”; a third, “For cottages and pavilions”; and a fourth, “£60,000 for fun.” “Come, my friends,” says the prince, “make haste and fill your buckets, whilst Van is keeping noisy Johnny quiet with fine speeches and promises of economy, which I am determined not to practise as long as I can get anything to expend; and while he is saving at the spiggot, we will have it out of the bunghole.”[73]
Preparing for the Match, or the 2nd of May, 1816, has reference to the marriage of the Princess Charlotte of Wales, who, as we have already seen, was on that day united to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. It had been preceded by a well-designed but most indelicate satire, labelled Royal Nuptials, published by J. Johnstone on the 1st of April, in which the prince is seen landing on our shores in a state of destitution, with a pitiable lack of certain necessary articles of clothing, which are being handed to him by John Bull in the guise of a countryman. The dramatis personæ are seven in number: Prince Leopold, John Bull, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the gouty Regent, the Princess Charlotte, old Queen Charlotte, with her snuff-box, and, behind her, an old woman intended, I believe, for the poor old king himself. The same year we find two other indelicate subjects: A Bazaar, a skit upon the immorality and costume of the period, comprising thirty figures; and another, in allusion to the marriage of the Princess Mary with her cousin, the Duke of Gloucester, on the 22nd of July, 1816. To those who have asserted that George Cruikshank “never pandered to sensuality ... or raised a laugh at the expense of decency,” that “satire in his hands never degenerated into savagery or scurrility,” I would commend the serious consideration of the three satires I have last named.
At the time Egypt was in the power of the French, during the The Elgin Marbles. early part of the century, Lord Elgin had quitted England upon a mission to the Ottoman Porte. A great change has taken place in the attitude and bearing of the Turks towards other European nations during the last half century; but even at this time the contempt and dislike which had characterized them in their behaviour towards every denomination of Christians still prevailed in full force. The success, however, of the British arms in Egypt, and the expected restitution of that province to the Porte, seem to have wrought a wonderful and instantaneous change in the disposition of that power and its people towards ourselves;[74] and Lord Elgin, availing himself of these favourable circumstances, obtained in the summer of 1801, access to the Acropolis of Athens for general purposes, with a concession to “make excavations and to take away any stones that might appear interesting to himself.” The result (shortly stated) was the excavation of the once celebrated “Elgin marbles,” about which, if we are to credit the report from which we glean this information, his lordship would seem to have expended (including the interest of capital) some £74,000. The committee recommend the House, under these circumstances, coupled with the valuations which they had obtained from competent authorities, that £35,000 was “a reasonable and sufficient price to be paid for the collection,” and their purchase appears to have been completed on the basis of these figures, a fact which forms the subject of the artist’s undated and admirable satire of John Bull Buying Stones at the Time his Numerous Family Want Bread.
Unsigned, and under date of 25th of November, 1816, I find a caricature published by Fores, which seems to me due to the hand of George Cruikshank. It is entitled, The Nightmayor, “painted by Fuzeley,” and represents a debased woman in the stertorous sleep of drunkenness, whose muddled dream-thoughts revert to the experiences with which her evil habits have made her so frequently familiar. The gin drinker has been brought before the Lord Mayor any number of times for being “drunk and disorderly,” and accordingly her nightmare assumes the form of the city official, who sits upon the body clothed in his robes and invested with the insignia of his office. Appended to the satire are the following lines:—
| “The night mayor flitting through the evening fogs, Traverses alleys, streets, courts, lanes, and bogs, Seeking some love-bewilder’d maid by gin oppress’d, Alights—and sits upon her downy breast.” |
The only other caricature of George I have to notice under date of 1816 is entitled, State Physicians Bleeding John Bull to Death. (*)
In our third chapter we referred to the distress which prevailed 1817. amongst the industrial classes during the two years which followed the fall of Bonaparte.[75] We meet with an exceedingly rare pictorial satire by George Cruikshank, which relates to this state of things; it bears the title of, John Bull Brought up for a Discharge, but Remanded on Account of Extravagance and False Schedule, and was published by Fores on the 29th of March, 1817. John Bull, a bankrupt, is being publicly examined as to the causes of his failure: “Being desired by the court to give some explanation [on the subject of the prodigious difference between his debts and his assets], he said that he had been persuaded originally to join with some of the parishioners in indicting his neighbour, Mr. Frog, for keeping a disorderly house; that they had engaged to bear their part of the expenses, but had all sneaked off one by one, and left him to pay the whole, and carry on the proceedings. It had at last, after being moved from one court to another, become a suit in Chancery; and he had been advised by the gentleman whom he had always consulted on these matters, and who was now dead, to go on and persevere, for that he would be sure to get a final decree in his favour, and all the costs. He had at last, in fact, got a decree in his favour, about two years since, before Lord Chancellor Wellington, and for the costs; but not a farthing had ever been paid, nor was it likely to be; on the contrary, Mr. Frog had surrendered himself, and gone to prison, where he was now living at this moment, at his [Mr. Bull’s] expense. Besides, the house in question was now opened again under a new license, granted by the magistrates of the district ... or rather, a renewal of the old one, in favour of the brother of the person who had kept it formerly, ... and the new landlord had taken down the late sign of the Bee Hive, and put up the old one of the Fleur-de-lis; but it was nearly as disorderly as ever, and the magistrates were obliged to keep up a great number of special constables to preserve the peace of the neighbourhood.”[76]
John Bull, in his best blue coat and white waistcoat, and suffering under an attack of gout is going through the ordeal of his public examination before the judge. In front of this functionary is the bankrupt’s schedule, on which we read the following items:—