Rowlandson the Caricaturist; a Selection from His Works. Vol. 2

by Joseph Grego

ALL THE TALENTS.

Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.

The complex nature of the famous Broad-Bottom Administration, known as ['All the Talents,'] is set forth in an allegorical representation, which is supposed to include the several qualifications of the vaunted illuminés. It may be remembered that this Ministry, which came into power under Liberal and popular auspices, retired on the rejection of their favourite measure, Catholic Emancipation, which they were pledged to introduce. The King, and his friends, the remnant of the Pittites, made a desperate stand against this measure, and the consequence of its defeat was the immediate withdrawal of 'All the Talents' from office. As embodied by Rowlandson's pencil, the combination of heterogeneous elements produced a curious monster: the wig of a learned judge is worn on the head of a spectacled ape, with an episcopal mitre and a Catholic crosier; a lawyer's bands, a laced coat, and ragged breeches; wearing one shoe, and a French jackboot; and dancing upon a funeral pyre of papers, the results of the Administration, its endless negotiations with France, and its sinecures and patronages, which are blazing away. The creature's right foot is discharging a musket, to represent the 'Army,' which is producing certain mischief in the rear, and bringing two heavy folios, Magna Charta and the Coronation Oath upon the head of the dangerous animal. The left hand, holding a pen upside-down, is supposed to be compounding new financial projects, in a ledger laid over a music book, 'Country dances,' an allusion to the alleged dancing proclivities of Lord Henry Petty, the Broad-Bottomite Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The smoke, from the pipe of this lusus Naturæ, is obscuring the portrait of William Pitt. The end of 'All the Talents,' who sacrificed their influence from conscientious motives, and whose upright principles were beyond suspicion, was a great source of triumph to their opponents, who signalised their retirement with a volley of satirical effusions. The 'Interment of the Broad-Bottomite Ministry' produced a shower of political squibs and caricatures; and among the best verses on the occasion, appeared the following mocking epitaph, which has been attributed to the gifted pen of Canning, who came into office on the dismissal of 'All the Talents.'

When the Broad-Bottomed junto, all nonsense and strife,
Resigned, with a groan, its political life;
When converted to Rome, and of honesty tired,
It to Satan gave back what himself had inspired;

The Demon of Faction, that over them hung,
In accents of anguish their epitaph sung;
While Pride and Venality joined in the stave,
And canting Democracy wept on the grave.

Here lies, in the tomb that we hollowed for Pitt,
The conscience of Grenville, of Temple the wit;
Of Sidmouth the firmness, the temper of Grey,
And Treasurer Sheridan's promise to pay.

Here Petty's finance, from the evils to come,
With Fitzpatrick's sobriety creeps to the tomb;
And Chancellor Ego, now left in the lurch,
Neither laughs at the law nor cuts jokes at the Church.

Then huzza for the party that here's laid to rest—
['All the Talents,'] but self-praising blockheads at best:
Though they sleep in oblivion, they've died with the hope,
At the last day of freedom, to rise with the Pope.