Title from published pamphlet for which this plate served as a frontispiece.
Frontispiece illustration evidently removed from a copy of an anonymous pamphlet satirising the administration of Robert Walpole, entitled: A Collection of State Flowers (London : Printed and sold by J. Dormer, 1734).
Mounted as item 122 into an album of collected prints, broadsides, drawings, and miscellaneous single sheet items, assembled by former owner Joseph Ames and entitled "Emblematical and satirical prints on persons and professions" (PML 145850).
Print shows a large sunflower (Walpole) at left on the stem of which is written "Shelter for Friends" turns towards the sun. Beyond is another large flower on the stem of which is written "Charitable Corporation Flower"; two men (directors of the Corporation) stand on its branches with their backs to the viewer shaking down the coins that form its petals; a woman, named "Mrs Brown", kneels on the ground beneath gathering up the coins, saying, "Oh! Ich de Engels Gelt beleuven". A man whose hat and wig lie on the ground, chops at the stem of the flower with an axe, saying, "Let 'em be ruin'd so we are made". Behind, a rose tree labelled, "Blown down but not forsaken", has been uprooted by a wind. In the foreground, beside the sunflower is a row of "Five Treasury Pinks[Lords]/Ready upon accasion" and with a paper labelled, "Excise"; beside them, sixteen thistles (the Scottish Representative Peers), say, "We speak for the Ready".