In the center of this image, John Bull is seated on a close stool and is surrounded by political figures who alternately feed him, purge him, and bleed him. Although Bull raises his hand in protest, the figures persist in abusing his body. Among the purgatives he is forced to submit to are bleeding by leaches, and "remedies" designed to evacuate his bowels. To his right, Lord Stanhope, here a quack doctor, forces him to swallow a roll of paper inscribed "Bank Paper." In his waiting hand he holds another rolled sheet. Standing at Bull's left, Lord Percival also plies Bull with false cures. Percival is in turn threatened by Lord King who grasps Percival's thin ponytail in one hand and raises a sheaf of paper labeled "Lord King's Leases" in his other. The most obvious beneficiary of the purges and force-feeding imposed on Bull is Napoleon Bonaparte, who crouches behind Bull's stool and greedily appropriates a tri-colored chamber pot into which Bull has evacuated gold coins. At the left of the central scene, a judge, assisted by two demons, encourages a blazing fire beneath a large cauldron. Trapped inside the pot of hot water, two gentlemen wave their arms and exclaim loudly at the heat of the boiling water. In the distance, at the right of this scene, a tiny gibbet and pillory stand against the horizon. Britannia stands at the far right of this sheet and mourns the demise of Credit. Dressed in classical garb, she wears a long white robe and a golden breastplate and helmet and carries a spear and a shield marked with the cross of St. George. Britannia stretches her arm towards a large pile of "Bank Paper" that is being blown by a zephyr who 'puffs' at the peak of the pile. The head and an arm of Credit emerge from the bottom of the suffocating mountain of paper.
Notes:
Published by M. Jones. Mary George notes that this image was a plate from the 'Scourge,' ii, before p. 87. 1811-08-01
Caption: Pubd August 1st 1811 by M Jones 5 Newgate Street
Dialogue: Figures in cauldron: "D__n it--it is as hot as Crown Count!!" "Yes! but not quite so hot as your house at Leicester!"
Dialogue: Britannia: "Alas, poor Credit!"
Label(s): The Combustible Knight and his Esquire in Hot Water
"The blessings of paper money, or king a bad subject"
(1811).
Napoleonic Satires from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Prints, Drawings and Watercolors from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:232205/
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