Satirical cartoon, A Peace Offering
Satirical cartoon, A Peace Offering to the Genius of Liberty and Equality. Dedicated to those lovers of French Freedom who would thus Debase their Country. The calls for peace by Fox and other Whigs, and Stanhope's motion of 23 January 1794 to acknowledge the French Republic, are here grossly misrepresented as a surrender to the French. The cartoon portrays leading members of the Opposition (Stanhope, Sheridan, Fox, Whitbread, the Duke of Bedford and Thomas Erskine) as literal sans-culottes donning revolutionary bonnets-rouges and offering symbols of England (the House of Lords, the Bank of England, India House, etc) to a monstrous French Genius or Marianne, the emblem of the French Republic, sitting on barrels of Holland Gin. An allegorical figure of justice lies dead on the ground
