from the recruiting-party under the influence of a threatening CHAP. letter from Pitt. In suggesting that he was hesitating as to IX. which side he should embrace, Gillray showed himself singularly blind to the character of one of the most fearless politicians of his age. A second scene, two years later, is equally inexact. On June 12, 1793, he appears in company with Sheridan, Priestley, Horne Tooke, and others, at a meeting at the Crown and Anchor to consider the pressing financial needs of Fox. Though Stanhope now supported and opposed the same causes as the great Whig leader, there is no evidence of any personal friendliness. A year later 'Citizen Don Quixotte' fills the stage as 'The Champion of French Principles,' which include atheism, rapine and murder, and are symbolised by blood-stained axes and daggers. On May 3, 1794, a broadside, entitled 'The Noble Sans-culotte,' represents him with a cap of liberty on his head dancing on his coronet. In his hand he holds a stick with the head of an ass, attached to a flag bearing the legend Vive l'Égalité. The following stanzas suggest the character of a satire too coarse to print in full1:

'Rank, character, distinction, fame,
And noble birth forgot,

Hear Stanhope, modest Earl, proclaim
Himself a Sans-Culotte !

'Of pomp and splendid circumstance
The vanity he teaches;
And spurns, like citizen of France,
Both coronet and breeches.

'But thrown away on lordly ears
His counsel none attend:

No pattern take his brother Peers
By Stanhope's latter end.

"At one end," says a noble Peer,
"No breeches I retain ;

From this confession we infer

At t'other end no brain.

'Nay, what if brains and breeches fail,
Pray, say no more about 'em ;

Since Stanhope, ay, and Lauderdale,
Can make a shift without 'em.'

On July 25 Stanhope appears with the Duke of Norfolk, Derby,
Michael Angelo Taylor, General Fox, Lauderdale, and Sheridan

1 A copy is in the British Museum.

CHAP. among the lazzaroni following the lead of Fox as St. Januarius. IX. The cartoon of February 2, 1795, The Genius of France Triumphant, or Britannia petitioning for peace, vide the proposals of Opposition, depicts Britannia sacrificing her shield and spear, crown and sceptre at the feet of a sans-culotte monster. Fox tenders the keys of the Bank of England, Sheridan promises allegiance, and Stanhope's figure bears the destruction of Parliament.'

His withdrawal from the House of Lords in no way diminished the hostility of the satirist. In a sketch entitled 'Patriotic Regeneration, namely, Parliament Reformed à la Française, that is, Honest Men (i.e. the Opposition) in the Seat of Justice,' Parliamentary Reform is supposed to have been carried. Fox occupies the presidential chair, while Sheridan and Erskine are at the clerks' table. Pitt, with a halter round his neck, is brought to the bar in the custody of Lauderdale, the public executioner. Stanhope, as the Fouquier-Tinville of the Assembly, is denouncing his brother-in-law for opposing the rights of subjects to dethrone their King, of sans-culottes to equalise property and annihilate nobility, of freemen to extirpate religion and divide the estates of the Church. On April 14 Gillray launched 'The Stanhope Republican Gunboat constructed to sail against Wind and Tide.' Stanhope bears the boat on his back, while a hideous ogre prods him with a trident. The vessel has to struggle against 'the current of public opinion' in the water and the furious blasts of Loyalty' in the air. On April 30 Pitt appears as Phoebus Apollo, or the Sun of the Constitution rising superior to the clouds of opposition.' The thick clouds display the features of Sheridan, Fox, and Stanhope dropping their daggers. On May 11 he appears steering the barge which carries English cattle to a French ship lying off the shore. On November 1 he joins in the attack on the State coach, a sketch inspired by the hustling of the King on his way to and from the opening of Parliament. One of the most elaborate of the cartoons, entitled 'Promised Horrors of the French Invasion,' appeared in the autumn of 1796. The French soldiers, having burned St. James's Palace, march up St. James's Street, slaying as they advance. While Pitt, Burke, Dundas, Windham, and other Ministerialists are dead or about to die, the Opposition assist the invaders in their work of slaughter. Among the seething crowd is Stanhope, who holds aloft a pair of scales in which the severed head of Grenville is weighed against the trunk. In the spring of 1797 he assists the Opposition leaders in endeavouring to dissuade John Bull from accepting the paper-money which became legal tender when