Anticipation, or the Approaching Fate of the French Commercial Treaty
The French Commercial Treaty, which had been brilliantly negotiated by William Eden in September 1786, was part of William Pitt's combined strategy for economic recovery after the disastrous American war. It included the gradual reduction of sinecures, the addition of specific targeted taxes, and the stimulation of trade. As Robin Reilly explains it in his book, William Pitt the Younger, the
purpose of the treaty was the settlement of duties to allow the principal products of each country to be exported, with a minimum of restrictions, to the other. . . . Most important of all, the treaty opened to British manufacturers, a market which, as Adam Smith had pointed out ten years earlier, was eight times as populous as the American Colonies and, because of its proximity, able to trade three times as fast.
© Trustees of the British Museum
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Flattering no one, Gillray's print portrays the expected level of debate over the commercial treaty in the House of Commons as a potential dog fight. The Tory dogs, including Pitt (Fawning Billy), Dundas (the Navy Treasurer), Pepper Arden (Attorney General), and Archibald Macdonald (Solicitor General) desperately try to hold on to the Treaty. The Whig attack dogs, including (from front to back) Fox (with his usual heavy eyebrows), Burke (with spectacles), and Sheridan (famous for School for Scandal) try to tear the Treaty to shreds. The ever lethargic Lord North lies prone in the foreground, nearly asleep in mid-chew.
In fact, the Treaty was widely recognized by most British manufacturers as giving them significant economic advantages, and the opposition to the Treaty by Fox and the Whigs scarcely mentioned its specific provisions. Instead, Fox relied upon the general and ultimately unpersuasive argument that the French could not be trusted. The ministerial advantage in the argument may be suggested by the fact that the Tory side of the house, in Gillray's print, seems to have all the bones.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on Anticipation, or the Approaching Fate of the French Commercial Treaty
- "Eden Agreement," Wikipedia
- Robin Reilly, William Pitt the Younger, 1979, 142–145
- John W. Derry, Charles James Fox, 1972, pp. 234–241
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #20
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