Motion Colophon (1 results)

Broadside, oblong folio (310 x 370mm), old traces of mounting in an album in the left margin, large old patched repair on the verso, strengthening a few small tears (no surface loss), but generally in very good condition. First edition. A famous broadside, containing a poem of 10 three-line stanzas (with indications of a refrain), printed in letterpress below a large satirical print (plate mark 190 x 305mm). The occasion of this broadside, and several others in a similar format, was a constitutional crisis, in which the opponents of Robert Walpole introduced a motion in Parliament for his removal from the government, on the grounds that he had exceeded his authority by making himself 'sole and prime minister', overwhelming thereby the legislative authority of his parliamentary colleagues. Many MPs had serious misgivings about trying a minister on such general allegations, and the motion was defeated, by 108 to 59 in the House of Lords, and by 290 to 106 in the Commons. This broadside is a satire on the opposition. The print shows a scene in front of Whitehall and the Treasury. In the foreground is a caricature of William Pulteney, leading his followers by the nose; Pulteney is depicted as fat, which he was, and he is steering a wheelbarrow full of such opposition periodicals as the Craftsman, and Fielding's Champion. Also shown are Carteret, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Cobham, Bubb Doddington, etc. For a full discussion of this important print, and those which immediately followed, see Dorothy George, English Political Caricature to 1792, pp. 89-90: 'One of the peaks of English pictorial polemics'. As Miss George points out, the poem below the print is notable as the first example of a device which soon became popular: 'The verse explanation is in the patter of a Savoyard raree-showman, admirably suited to the fantasies of propaganda'. Foxon M525; BM Catalogue of Satires 2479. Scarce: Foxon and ESTC between them locate nine copies.