This is the friend of Rome

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Isaac Cruikshank
1756?-1811?
This is the friend of Rome
etching, hand-colored
image: 319 x mm; plate mark: 353 x 249 mm; sheet: 327 x 252 mm (trimmed)
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 1687
Published: 
London : Pub. June 21, 1790, by W.S.[sic] Fores, N. 3 Piccadilly, [21 June 1790]
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Notes: 

Printmaker from BM Satires.
Library's copy cropped at head of sheet, with loss of imprint.

Summary: 

Print shows Horne Tooke (left) pulling on a rope attached to a chain which links the necks of Hood and Fox, whom he is about to haul up to a gibbet. Hood and Fox stand bound together (right), a chain round their bodies and round a leg of each. Tooke is helped by two men partly visible on the extreme left; he says: "We hope all uninfluenced and Independent Electors will assist our Endeavours to Crush this truly Infamous Coalition to Deprive the Electors of Westminster of their franchises & make it like a Corrupt & Rotten Borough". Hood says, "Ah! this comes of my Getting into bad Company - Evil Communications Corrupt good manners." Fox says, "O my Dear Lord I Thought to have sold this City next Election for 100,000, or if I had been nickd in the Intrim, to have left it in my will to Major Hanger or H[ervey] Aston". An elector, whose profile appears on the lower right. margin of the design, says, "Charly looks D------d Gllum - he is Gallows Poor Else I should have nail'd Five Quid for em". The gibbet is inscribed: 'The End of all unnattural & unjust Coalitions'. Above it is a scroll inscribed: 'Caesar has Friends & Pompey has Friends but Rome has no Friends'. A cherub flying in the air points at Tooke; he holds an open book inscribed: 'Junius Discovered by P. Thicknesse'. (This tract (1789) identified Junius as Horne Tooke, cf. BMSat 7588). Cf. BM Satires.

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