3-056-949 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Opening of the Budget; or John Bull giving his breeches to save his bacon, 1818. Satire on the British government's budget reductions in order to sustain the French Wars. Charles James Fox :'What more Money O the Aristocrat Plunderer Vite Citoyens Vite Vite depeches vous - or we shall be too late to come in for any snacks of the l'argent Vite Citoyens Vite! Vite'. John Bull: 'a coming! are they! Nay then take all I've got at once Master Billy, vor it's much better for I to ge ye all I have in the World to save my Bacon; than to stay & be strip'd stark naked by Charley & the plundering French Invazioners as you say'. William Pitt: 'More Money John! more Money! to defend you from the Bloody - the Cannibal French - They're a coming why they'll Strip you to the very Skin more money John - They're a coming They're a coming'. Dundas, Grenville and Burke: 'Ay they're a coming' [etc]. From "The caricatures of Gillray" by James Gillray.