America in English Satirical Prints

Abstract

H TISTORIANS, who generally tend to neglect iconography, have commonly ignored satirical prints that had so great a vogue in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet these satires offer information of greatest interest to students of eighteenth-century England and her colonies. The value of print collection in British Museum, for those working in field of early American history, in particular, can hardly be exaggerated. These shop-window prints, sold plain or colored, were an institution. They circulated widely, were exported, were announced in newspapers, were pasted on walls of inns and taverns and workshops. Collections were to be found in most gentlemen's libraries-Horace Walpole's is now in New York Public Library; Sir Robert Peel's, in twelve volumes, is also in America. There is much contemporary evidence of their influence and importance. We go to them for immediate reactions to events, for trends of propaganda, waves of emotion, common assumptions, myths, fantasies, distorting mirrors, political climates-for what is called public opinion. Some prints naively expressed popular notions; a few were inspired in high places, intended to influence influential. Almost all depend partly on their inscriptions to make them intelligible, and these show how much public were interested in details of politics. Some are graphic pamphlets, intricacies of which, are rewarding to student of opinion and ideas. Most of these pictorial satires were anti-Ministerial, in accordance with a well-established tradition (much weakened after I784)-a tradition fostered by long opposition to Walpole as an unconstitutional Prime Minister, a tyrannical Colossus. They were virtually immune from prosecution, and in I756,, Horace Walpole called them the freshest treason.' They illustrate way in which scurrility and ridicule were used as political weapons, as has been shown in Gerald S. Brown's Quarterly article on Lord George Sack-