Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/215

 design, The Pedigree of Corporal Violet; all of which are etched from the designs of other artists.

Hardly was Napoleon despatched to the island prison which was so shortly to prove his grave, and replaced by the unwieldly Louis, than the latter came in for his full share of satire. In another of George Cruikshank's caricatures of the same year, he shows us The Royal Laundress [Louis the Eighteenth] Washing Boney's Court Dresses, Napoleon watching the process the while from St. Helena. "Ha, ha!" he laughs, "such an old woman as you might rub a long while before they'll be all white, for they are tri-coloured in grain." Another shows us fat Louis climbing the mat de cocagne (soaped pole) and clutching the crown of France; he clambers up on the shoulders of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, his immediate supporter being England. Napoleon watches his progress from across the sea; "I climbed up," he says, "twice, without any help." Other subjects of the year are: Friends in Need, and John's Dream, or the Prince and Old England for Ever!

The repugnance of the Regent to the economical measures which were forced upon the ministry in 1816 is well-known. The people complained with every just reason of the pressure of taxes, which were levied, as they said, upon the industrious, to be squandered in extravagant salaries, sinecures, and unmerited pensions. They complained of the large standing army, which the Regent insisted to be necessary for the maintenance of "our position and high character among the European powers." The prince's aversion to the popular cry for retrenchment and reform is shown by one of George's caricatures entitled, Sick of the Property Tax, or Ministerial Influenza, published by Fores on the 8th of March, 1816, where we see the ministers vomiting into a huge receptacle labelled "Budget," the matter voided consisting of "Standing armies," "Property tax," "Increase of salaries," and so on. The gouty, self-indulgent prince hobbles up to his ministers on a pair of crutches marked respectively, "More economy" and "Increase of income." Under his arms he carries bundles of accounts, most of which relate to his own private expenditure, and are Libelled,