Satire on the incident of Jenkins' ear and Walpole's unwillingness to go to war with Spain.
Lettered below the image with the title; twelve lines of verse in three columns: The Great man easy sits in Borrow'd State ... What tis to rouze the Masters of the Main.
Mounted as item 9 into an album of collected prints, broadsides, drawings, and miscellaneous single sheet items, assembled by former owner J. Ames and entitled "Emblematical and satirical prints on persons and professions" (PML 145850).
Walpole sits at a table on which lie papers lettered "Memorials", "Madrid", "Paris" and "Schemew for a New Bridge [at Westminster]", and with his left hand pushes away Captain Robert Jenkins who presents his severed ear. A black servant pulls back Jenkins's wig to reveal where the ear had been removed seven years earlier by Spanish coastguards who had boarded his ship off Havana. In front of the table an elegant Frenchman, identified by a paper in his pocket as a "Mediator" offers a letter from Cardinal Fleury together with a box of jewels to a seated lady (presumably the king's mistress, Amelie Wallmoden) who holds out her hand to receive them. A man kneeling beside her uses a large candle to set fire to a copy of the Craftsman dated 2 July 1737 (this edition criticised the Bill for Licensing the Stage and had been supressed and the printer Henry Haines was imprisoned for two years). To the right, a merchant complaing of "Spanish Depredations" is kicked out of the door, and on the left two men shake the contents of a bag marked "10,000" through a grid iron into a larger bag lettered, "Sinking Fund"; a dog chews a paper lettered, "Merchants Complaint". Through the door on the right can be seen a Spanish ship firing on an English one