Catalogue Number
NMLH.1993.372.27
Object Name
Print
Title
Substitutes For Bread Or Right Honorables Saving the Loaves & Dividing the Fishes
Place
England & UK
People
Pitt, William
Events
anti-Corn Laws campaign
Date
1795
Creator(s)
Gillray, JamesHumphrey, H.
Description
OSP: The print shows protestors outside the window, requesting "Grant us the crumbs which drop from your table", while inside Pitt and others tuck into a feast made up of gold coins.
Text from Hung Drawn and Caricaured exhibition CD Rom:
William Pitt (the Younger), far right, Born - 28 May 1759, Died - 23 January 1806, Prime Minister - (1783 - 1801) and (1804 - 1806). Son of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. Prime Minister William Pitt is shown gorging on a huge fish made from gold coins whilst seated on a padlocked treasury box.
Henry Dundas (1st Viscount Mellville) in the cenre of the print, born 1742 died 1811, Pitt's secretary of war at the time of this print. Dundas' comment on the shortage of wheat was that: "...while the rich were enjoying other luxuries, they should diminish their consumption of bread, that more...should be left for the use of the poor". (M. D. George "British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires", Vol. VII)
Baron Grenville (William Wyndham), b. 1759 d.1834, left of Dundas, bent over, shovelling food into his mouth. Son of Prime Minister George Grenville, he was home secretary and foreign secretary under his cousin Pitt the Younger.
Alexander Wedderburn (1st Baron Loughborough, 1st Earl of Rosslyn), far left, born 1757 in Edinburgh,
He wears a long Chancellor's wig and is seated on a woolsack.
The scene outside the window is of angry protesters carrying placards stating: "Petition from the starving swine", "Grant us the crumbs from your table". The description of themselves as 'swine' refers to Edmund Burke's "swinish multitude".
Poor wheat harvests in 1794 and 1795 resulted in food shortages. The title references official fast days.
