File:Mad Tom's first political essay on the rights of man (BM J,2.102).jpg

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Mad Tom's first political essay on the rights of man   (Wikidata search (Cirrus search) Wikidata query (SPARQL)  Create new Wikidata item based on this file)
Artist

Print made by: Isaac Cruikshank

Published by: S W Fores
Title
Mad Tom's first political essay on the rights of man
Description
English: Tom Paine, Sheridan, and Whitbread as conspirators and incendiaries wear hooded cloaks and slouch hats. Paine (left), a bare-legged sans-culotte with ragged shirt, kneels on one knee, holding a torch to a pair of breeches (his own) stuffed with straw which he is putting under the floor, a plank having been removed. He says, "Now for a Deed that shall outdo my Pen". Sheridan bends forward in profile to the left, holding a dark lantern; he says, "Ca ira, Ca ira, Ca ira, thats your sort [a phrase from the 'Road to Ruin', see BMSat 8071], now Master brown bread D--mn--n to Scandel". He addresses Whitbread, who stands behind him, full face, hands clasped, with an expression of terror. He says, "I am Cursedly afraid, we shall kindle such a flame as will bury us in the ruins, I'd be very Glad to treat them with as many Butts of Brown Stout as would reach from here to Windsor to wash my name out of the Association oh. Lord, lighten our Darkness." (An allusion to Peter Pindar's 'Birthday Ode . . .':



'Now Mr. Whitbread serious did declare,
To make the majesty of England stare,
That he had butts enough he knew,
Placed side by side, would reach along to Kew.)'

They stand on a landing between two flights of stairs, one (left) ascending, one (right) descending; Whitbread stands just below the landing on the extreme right. 14 May 1792.


Hand-coloured etching
Depicted people Associated with: Thomas Paine
Date 1792
date QS:P571,+1792-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
Medium paper
Dimensions
Height: 250 millimetres
Width: 389 millimetres
institution QS:P195,Q6373
Current location
Prints and Drawings
Accession number
J,2.102
Notes

(Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VI, 1938) On 9 May the House of Commons escaped being burnt: a pair of smouldering breeches had been thrust under the ceiling of a closet; this filled the lobby with smoke, and the burning breeches were discovered. 'Lond. Chronicle', 12 May 1792; see also BMSats 8088, 8091, 8092. For Paine's 'Rights of Man' see BMSat 7867, &c. The 'Association' of which Whitbread speaks is the Friends of the People, formed to promote parliamentary reform. See Lord Holland's 'Memoirs of the Whig Party', i. 13-15; 'Lady Hollands Journal', i. 101-2, and BMSats 8085, 8095, 8131, 8140, 8141, 8144.

Reproduced, 'Social England', ed. Traill, 1904, v. 666.
Source/Photographer https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_J-2-102
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 © The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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