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The Income Tax, or the Insatiable English Dragon, 19 July 1803

 Item — Box: LF104/7 Box 1
Reference code: LF104/7/27
The Income Tax, or the Insatiable English Dragon, 19 July 1803
The Income Tax, or the Insatiable English Dragon, 19 July 1803

Scope and Contents

Artist: Isaac Cruikshank. Published: Thomas Williamson. A showman, wearing a hat, wig, and gown suggestive of the Speaker (but quite unlike Abbot), stands holding a long wand to display a scaly monster with wide-open mouth fringed with teeth. The audience are (left to right) a Scot, an Irishman, and an Englishman, unsophisticated fellows. Inside the gaping jaws are a country house, hay-stacks, trees, and grazing cattle, a ship with furled sails, and a treasure-chest. The showman says: "You see Gentlemen with what ease it swallows Houses, Ships, Treasure Chest, Landed estates, Cattle, & Merchandize I shall be much surprized if he does not in a few years [swallow] all the property in the united Kingdoms." John Bull says: "Looke Pat, he makes no more of em than you or I would of a hazel nut, the Devil take the fellow that brought it to this Country [Pitt]. Pat says: "By Jasus, hee seems to have eat himself all but the Tail." The Scot, in Highland dress, scratches himself violently and says: "By St Andrew the very sight of him maak's me itch to eemigrate." The three wear in their hats, respectively, oak-leaves, shamrock, and thistle with St. Andrew's Cross. The body of the fore-shortened monster merely frames its cavernous mouth, but shows glaring eye-balls, fore-paws, horns and scaly barbed tail. Description from the British Museum.

Dates

  • Creation: 19 July 1803

Conditions Governing Access

Physical item available by appointment in our Reading Room

Extent

1.0 Item(s)

Language of Materials

English

Repository Details

Part of the Special Collections and Archives Repository

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University of Sheffield
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