Such is the disturbance set forth in the satirical engraving of “The Addressers” (March 8, 1769), in which is represented the fracas at the King’s Arms Tavern consequent on this insidious attempt to manufacture a bogus address. Attorney Reynolds’s wig is awry, from the blow inflicted by Dingley; he is knocking the latter out of the chair, and exclaiming, “I’ll make you pay for this.” Dingley is saying, “For this £2000 more;” while, in falling, from his pocket drops a paper, “Saw-mill, £2000.” “Van Scrip,” Muilmann, alluding to the cash considerations held out by the ministers to their allies, is extending his hand, and crying in dismay, “We shall lose this scrip!” A spectator, armed with a riding-whip, is asserting, “You’ll be Jockey’d, Mynheer.” The persons in the crowd are demanding, “A chair! a chair!” while others shout to the contrary; the chair itself is mounted on a table placed in the middle of the room. Mr. Apvan (Vaughan) is occupying this perilous distinction. “Why address, Gentlemen?” is his question to the meeting. A slight fencing-match is going on; the chairman holding his own, while those who attack him cry “Order.” A clergyman—no other than the “Brentford Parson” in person—is suggesting the propriety of “an Address to keep the streets clean,” the condition of the thoroughfares in London being the subject of complaint at this time. From the report of these proceedings published in the Gentleman’s Magazine, it appears that a speaker asserted that the “proper functions of such an assembly were to order the scavengers to clean the streets, and beadles to remove vagrants from them.” The fragments of the chair first dismantled, as described, are in the hands of some of the company by the door. A man has gone down in his exertions “to stand up for the Address.” The incendiary document in question is carried off by one Mr. Phelim O’Error, who is declaring, “I’ll take it to the Merchant Seamen’s Office,” to which it was removed on the next stage of its career.
Another version of these proceedings appeared, March 8, 1769, as “The Battle of Cornhill;” an engraving given in the Town and Country Magazine, with a short parody in the style of a drama on the subject, as detailed in the foregoing “Addressers.” The counter-assault upon Dingley is similarly illustrated. Reynolds, the Attorney Freeman of the drama, is depicted as a tall, burly man. Dingley is made to cry, “Murder, murder. Oh, the rascal. I’ll have him imprisoned seven years for this illegal attack. He has done me twelve hundred, if not two thousand pounds damage.” Van Scrip is much alarmed: “Heaven! what will become of me! I shall lose all my interest in the Treasury, if we fail in carrying it. I shan’t have a single government contract, not so much as a thousand pounds scrip.” An anecdote is related in the London Museum (ii. 1770, p. 32) concerning the use of lottery tickets as bribes by the Government, where Bradshaw, secretary to the Treasury, stigmatized by “Junius” as “the cream-coloured parasite,” is alleged to have “met the member for Buckinghamshire (Lowndes), and offered two hundred lottery tickets at ten pounds each, which were accepted.” Scrip and lottery tickets were freely employed for political bribery at this period, as Walpole mentions in his “Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third,” and Sir H. N. Wraxall describes in his “Historical Memoirs.”
“The Inchanted Castle; or, King’s Arms in an Uproar” (March 8, 1769) is a further pictorial version of the same occurrence, with little variation as to the persons or incidents represented, but containing a reference, like the last, to the “London Tavern,” the recognized head-quarters and meeting-place for the Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights, and consequently opposed to sycophantic admiration of ministerial illegalities. Beneath the print in question is a copy of verses, beginning—
“I sing the bloody fight and dire alarms
’Twixt London Tavern and King’s Arms.
Planning Addresses Dingley’s party sate,
And meditating on their Country’s fate.”
Horace Walpole thus describes the transactions represented in the foregoing:—
“The merchants of London, to the number of six or eight hundred, amongst whom were Dutch, Jews, and any officious tools that they could assemble, having signed one of those servile panegyrics [addresses], set out in a long procession of coaches, to carry it to St. James’s.”
The modus operandi by which the address was promoted is fancifully summed up in the plate of the Oxford Magazine, vol. ii., p. 134, “The Principal Merchants and Traders assembled at the Merchant Seamen’s Office, to sign ye Address.” This print represents a further stage in the progress of the transaction. The Public Advertiser, March 11, 1769, announces, “For these two Days past, numbers of the Merchants and principal Traders of London have attended at the Merchant Seamen’s Office, over the Royal Exchange, in order to sign an Address to his Majesty, etc.”
It is stated in the Oxford Magazine, “So eager were the ministers to procure a long list of subscribers that, it is credibly reported, some of the addresses of the then ‘City Merchants,’ were signed by cobblers, porters, chairmen, livery-servants, and the very meanest of the rabble; for as the number of hands was the chief point of view, they cared but little of what rank or condition they were.” The caricaturist has carried out this view of the signatories. The chairman or president is a butcher, whose tray, containing a shoulder of mutton, is laid down at his feet; he is filled with loyal frenzy, and, with his butcher’s knife grasped ready for action, is exclaiming, “I shall stick my knife in Magna Charta, and cut up the carcase of the Bill of Rights.” A porter, with his knot, is anathematizing Wilkes’s “swivel eyes,” and wishing he “may sink under his load.” The petition is being signed by a barber, with his bowl under his arm, together with an aldermanic wig just ordered: “Ah, I’ve got an order for a new wig, only for signing my name.” A Scotch pedlar, with pack and staff, one of Lord Bute’s followers, declares, “Sawney mun sign too, gin it be to the De’il, for my guid laird’s sake.” A journeyman baker, with a basketful of loaves on his back, is coming in succession, well paid for his assistance: “Brother Merchants, follow my example, and you’ll never want bread;” and even a sooty chimney-sweep has expectations of ministerial patronage, “Who knows but I may be appointed to a Chimney at Court?” Prominent among those at the table whereon is the much-denounced “Address,” is a Jew money-jobber, who is elated at his prospects of a Treasury “job,” “Oh! for a large portion of scrip!” and the Dutch stockbroker, Van Scrip, is exclaiming, “Ah! de gross Scrip for Mynheer too,”—the subscription scrip to government loans, profitable to those who secured preference allotments, and, as described, alleged to be manipulated by the ministry in the nature of bribery.
The strictures provoked upon the underhand methods by which these addresses were forced upon the public are exemplified in an “Epistle to the North Briton,” which appeared in the Oxford Magazine, to accompany the engraving of the “Addressing Merchants.” The epistle is lengthy, and we have only room for the opening passages. It is possibly written by the “Brentford Parson;” indeed, the manner as well as matter indicates the authorship suggested. The motto is given, “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. i. 9)—
“And so, sir, what you have often foretold is at last come to pass. We are fairly fallen back into the very dregs of the Stuart reigns. The party of Abhorrers is once more revived; of those Abhorrers, who, in the reign of King Charles the Second, expressed their detestation of all the patriotic and public spirited, as I would say—but, as they were pleased to call them, the factious and insolent petitions that were presented to the king for assembling a parliament, and for securing the other rights and liberties of the People.
“That such wretches should have existed at a time when the Sovereign claimed, and many of his subjects were willing to allow him, a divine, indefeasible, hereditary right to play the tyrant, and to destroy the constitution is nothing strange; but that any such should be found in the reign of a prince, whose family was advanced to the throne in direct contradiction to this absurd principle, would be really surprising, did we not know that human nature is always the same, and that though the seeds of slavery may be smothered for a time, yet whenever they meet with the vivifying influence of court sunshine, they immediately begin to quicken, and to spring up with vigour. And never, sure, did these seeds meet with a more fertile soil, or a more benign sky, than under the present arbitrary and despotic administration, when every man is sure to be rewarded in exact proportion to the servility of his character.
“In this respect, indeed, the present ministers have greatly the advantage of all that have gone before them; for I do not remember a single compliment paid to the Abhorrers, in the reign of King Charles the Second, except the honour of knighthood conferred upon Francis Withers, Esq., who procured and presented the Address from the City of Westminster. But how much more grateful and generous have been our present ministers! They have made the late chief City Magistrate a Privy Councillor, and have given him a contract with government for clothing soldiers, worth £1000 per annum. They have pardoned the murderers MacLaughlin, Balfe, and McQuirk, and have even granted them pensions. This, say the ministry, is only supporting their friends; but, if murderers be their friends, I believe few people will envy them the credit of such a connection.
“Some of the addresses in the reign of the Stuarts breathed a very free and independent spirit. That of the Quakers, upon the accession of King James the Second, may serve as an instance. It was conceived in the following terms:—
“‘We come,’ said they, ‘to testify our sorrow for the death of our good friend Charles, and our joy for thy being made our governor. We are told thou art not of the persuasion of the Church of England, no more than we; wherefore we hope thou wilt grant us the same liberty which thou allowest thyself. Which doing, we wish thee all manner of happiness.’
“There we see the Quakers, with their usual plainness and simplicity, very roundly tell his majesty, that he was not a member of the church of England; a circumstance, which was then thought by many, and hath since been declared by law, to be sufficient to disqualify him for wearing the crown of these Kingdoms.
“But how much more courtly and polite is the language of our present Addressers. They not only pay the highest compliments to the King, which he certainly deserves, they even offer the most nauseous and fulsome flattery to his ministers and servants, and express their entire approbation of every part of their conduct. They must therefore approve of the robbery committed upon the Duke of Portland, of the massacre in St. George’s Fields, of the riot and murders at Brentford, of withdrawing MacLaughlin from the cognizance of the laws, and of pardoning Balfe and McQuirk after they had been fairly tried and condemned by their country.
“But, not satisfied with declaring their approbation of the conduct of the ministry, they express their utter abhorrence and detestation of the conduct of those who have had the presumption to oppose them. They must, therefore, abhor the conduct of the Freeholders of Middlesex, who chose Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Serjeant Glynn, their representatives in parliament, in spite of all the violent, outrageous, and illegal attempts which the ministry made to prevent them. They must abhor the conduct of the 139 independent members who voted against the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes from an august assembly, of which they form the respectable, and perhaps even the most wealthy, tho’ not the most numerous part. They must abhor the conduct of the Citizens of London, of the Citizens of Westminster, of the Freeholders of Middlesex, and of all the other counties and corporations, who, in their instructions to their representatives, have disapproved of those very measures which the Addressers approve. In a word, they must abhor the conduct, at least the sentiments, of ninety-nine parts in a hundred of the people of England, who, if taken separately, and fairly interrogated, would be found to entertain opinions very different from those of the Addressers.”