Dutch Neutrality, 1745.
There was also a burlesque "Bill of Costs for a late Tory Election in the West," in which we find such items as "bespeaking and collecting a mob," "a set of No-Roundhead roarers," "a set of coffee-house praters," "Dissenter damners," "demolishing two houses," "committing two riots," "breaking windows," "roarers of the word Church," "several gallons of Tory punch on church tombstones." It is questionable, however, if in all the burlesques of the period there was one more ridiculous than the narrative of an actual occurrence in April, 1715, when the footmen of members of the House of Commons met outside of the House, according to established custom, to elect a Speaker. The Tory footmen cast their votes for "Sir Thomas Morgan's servant," and the Whigs for "Mr. Strickland's man." A dispute arising, a fight ensued between the two parties, in the midst of which the House broke up, and the footmen were obliged to attend their masters. The next day, as soon as the House was in session, the fight was renewed, and, after a desperate struggle, the victorious Whigs carried their man three times in triumph round Westminster Hall, and then adjourned to a Whig ale-house, the landlord of which gave them a dinner, the footmen paying only for their drink.
British Idolatry of the Opera-Singer Mingotti, 1756.
"Ra, ra, ra, rot ye,
My name is Mingotti.
If you worship me notti,
You shall all go to potti."
The caricatures of the Walpole period preserve the record of the first attempt to lessen by law the intemperate drinking of gin—the most pernicious of the spirituous liquors. A law was passed imposing upon this article a very heavy excise, and prohibiting its sale in small quantities. But in 1736 England had not reached, by a century and a half, the development of civilization which admits of the adequate consideration of such a measure; nor can the poor man's gin ever be limited by law while the rich man's wine flows free. This gin law appears to have been killed by ridicule. Ballads lamenting the near decease of "Mother Gin" were sung in the streets; the gin-shop signs were hung with black, and there were mock ceremonies of "Madame Geneva's Lying in State," "Mother Gin's Wake," and "Madame Gin's Funeral." Paragraphs notified the public that the funeral of Madame Gin was celebrated with great merriment, many of both sexes "getting soundly drunk," and a mob following her remains with torches. The night before the measure went into operation was one of universal revel among the gin-drinkers, and every one, we are assured, carried off as much of the popular liquor, for future consumption, as he could pay for. The law was evaded by the expedients long afterward employed in Maine, when first a serious attempt was made to enforce the "Maine Law." Apothecaries and others colored their gin, put it into phials, and labeled it "Colic Water," "Make-shift," "The Ladies' Delight," with printed "Directions" to take two or three spoonfuls three or four times a day, "or as often as the fit takes you." Informers sprung into an importance never before known, and many of them invented snares to decoy men into violations of the law. So odious did they become that if one of them fell into the hands of the mob, he was lucky to escape with only a ducking in the Thames or a horse-trough. In short, the attempt was ill-considered and premature, and after an experiment of two or three years it was given up, having contributed something toward the growing unpopularity of the ministry.