Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/162

 offering to Her Majesty a purse. "Abandon," he says, "your claim to the throne, change your name and the livery, and retire to some distant part of the earth, where you may never be seen or heard of any more; and if £50,000 per annum will not satisfy you—what will?" To which the queen (who assumes an appearance of virtuous indignation) replies, "Nothing but a crown." Brougham turns his back, saying, "I turn my back on such dirty work as this," the tact being, as we have seen, that he had really entered into negotiations with the ministers on the queen's behalf, which she afterwards angrily repudiated. The devil pats him on the back. "Well done, Broom," he says; "you have done your business well." By the side of the queen stands a figure, possibly meant for Alderman Wood, earning "a shield for the innocent," and "a sword for the guilty"; behind her in the distance is a ship, bearing the title of "The Wooden Walls of Old England."

In our last chapter we mentioned the estimation in which the witnesses against Caroline of Brunswick were held by her sympathizers and the general public, and Robert's political views naturally inclined him to take the popular side. Those who saw them before they were housed in Cotton Garden, describe them as swarthy, dirty looking fellows, in scanty ragged jackets and greasy leathern caps; at the bar of the House, however, they looked as respectable as fine clothes and soap and water could make them. To this a caricature of Robert's, entitled, Preparing the Witnesses—a View in Cotton Garden, refers. Three dirty foreigners are being washed, with no satisfactory result, in a bath labelled, "Waters of Oblivion," "Non Mi Ricordo," and "Ministerial Washing Tub." One of the operators (probably the Attorney-General, Sir Robert Gifford) remarks that "he never had such a dirty job in his life"; seated around are a number of equally dirty foreigners awaiting their turn. On the same theme and in the same year we find The Milan Commission (a very rough affair); The Master Cook and his Black Scullion composing a Royal Hash; and a satire on the alderman, who, in spite of his Carolinian and popular sympathies, figures therein under the familiar title of "Mother Wood."