File:Voluntary subscriptions. (BM 1868,0808.6686).jpg

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Voluntary subscriptions.   (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
Voluntary subscriptions.
Description
English: Pitt and Dundas await the payment of subscriptions. Dundas (left), standing in profile to the left, supports a huge book on a writing-table, watching through an open sash-window the advance of a crowd carrying money-bags. He shouts: "ah - I ken the money bags - it will do - it will do - they are camming they are comming" [cf. BMSat 9158]. On the left page of his book:


'Subscription Book For the preservation of our Places, our pensions our Candle ends - our Cheese paring our Bishoprics - our Rectories - our Grandmothers Our Wives our Sisters &c &c &c &c &c &c &c &c
By Penny Post
from the west } - 200-000
end of the Town

On the other page (almost concealed by Dundas) is 'Ld Fitz . . 10,000 Per ann.' Dundas wears a Scots bonnet in which is a thistle, a tartan plaid and stockings, with a coat and breeches. Some of the bags carried by the crowd are inscribed '10,000', '500', '30'. Behind them tall houses are indicated and an equestrian statue.
On the right is an open door, through which Tierney enters with a satisfied smile, his right hand thrust under his waistcoat. He holds a paper: 'Borough Remonstrance', and says, "Will he bleed? if he dont I'll prick him again". Pitt leans forward in profile to the right to speak to the King, who is in the room but almost concealed behind the open door, only nose, mouth, and hands appearing. The latter says: "cant afford it, I tell you - cant afford it, allways some new fangled nonsense or another - I wish you would let us be at Peace and Quietness." Pitt answers, his finger against his nose, "Mum! - a good draw! - soon come back - look well in the list." The door is covered with sketches of British miscarriages in the war: 'Quiberon', foot soldiers encounter cavalry and artillery (see BMSat 8669, &c). 'Toulon', damaged men-of-war in a bay (see BMSat 8434, &c). 'Dunkirk Races', cavalry in flight (see BMSat 8341). 'Plan of Starving the French', incoherent scrawls. (On the eve of war the British Government placed an embargo on corn intended for France. See Rose, 'Pitt and the Great War', 1911, pp. 103-4, 107.) Above the door is partly visible a bust portrait of George III, inscribed 'Kg of Corsi[ca]'. (See BMSat 8516.) 16 January 1798.


Hand-coloured etching
Depicted people Associated with: Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville
Date 1798
date QS:P571,+1798-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
Medium paper
Dimensions
Height: 276 millimetres
Width: 399 millimetres
institution QS:P195,Q6373
Current location
Prints and Drawings
Accession number
1868,0808.6686
Notes

(Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VII, 1942)

A satire on the miscarriages of the war (cf. BMSat 9231) as well as on the voluntary contribution proposed by the Speaker as an addition to the tripling of the Assessed Taxes (see BMSat 9043, &c). The King (nominally) gave £20,000, a third of his privy purse; Pitt, Dundas, and others £2,000 a year in lieu of their assessments, the payment being obligatory during the continuance of the Act or until the end of the war. Pellew, 'Life of Sidmouth', 1847, i. 197-8. The 'firm determination of the King not to subscribe one farthing' ('Morning Post', 17 Jan.) was one of the 'lies' pilloried in the 'Anti-Jacobin' (significantly, not till 12 Feb.). Actually the King wrote to Pitt (23 Jan.): 'whatever I could nominally subscribe can be but little and must be again repaid me.' On 25 Jan., after consultation with Drummond's, he announced that the subscription would be paid in four quarterly instalments from 1 Apr, Stanhope, 'Life of Pitt', 1867, iii, Appendix, pp. xi-xii. This letter gave Pitt 'good hopes of success': the contribution had 'begun but languidly'. Letter to Wellesley, 26 Jan. Rosebery, 'Pitt', p. 207. Tierney, M.P. for Southwark, from 3 Nov. had made a series of resolutions and attacks against Dundas, the Assessed Taxes, placemen, and Government policy in general, cf. BMSat 9052, &c, and had said that he had 'a general retainer to oppose all the measures of Administration'. A meeting of protest against the tripling of the Assessed Taxes was held in Southwark on 11 Dec. 'Lond. Chron.', 12 Dec. 1797; 'Parl. Hist.' xxxiii. 963 ff., 1030 ff., &c. See BMSats 9158, 9287, and cf. BMSat 9349 (imprint). For 'candle-ends . . .' see BMSat 9038.
Source/Photographer https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1868-0808-6686
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 © The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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current11:18, 9 May 2020Thumbnail for version as of 11:18, 9 May 20201,600 × 1,130 (489 KB)Copyfraud (talk | contribs)British Museum public domain uploads (Copyfraud/BM) Satirical prints in the British Museum 1798 #2,398/12,043

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