The Real Cause of the Present High Price of Provisions

The year 1795 was a tough one if you were an ordinary citizen in Britain. January had seen the coldest month on record. In February there was widespread flooding as the snow melted and heavy rains aggravated the situation. The war against France was not going well. The King's ally and cousin, Willliam Prince of Orange had been driven from his country. The British army was being defeated in Flanders. And most recently in March and April, just weeks before this print, there was a series of food riots, as reported in The Morning Post and Fashionable World:

Very alarming accounts are received daily from various parts of the Country, respecting the general scarcity of Provisions which prevails throughout the Kingdom. The People have risen in many places, and demanded meat, bread, etc, at their own prices. A Company of Dragoons has been commanded off to Hatfield, to escort the Cattle to Smithfield, as they have been interrupted in many places on their way to the London Market. Much of the time of the Privy Council, which sat yesterday, was occupied, we understand, by this business.
(April 14, 1795 p. 2.)

The Real Cause of the Present High Price of Provisions

The Real Cause of the Present High Price of Provisions
[May 11, 1795]
© Trustees of the British Museum

This was the context for Gillray's gorgeous over-sized print. But its most immediate impetus was a pointed follow-up question raised by Mr Joseph Jekyll in the House of Commons as reported by the Morning Chronicle for May 9, that is, "the CAUSE (my emphasis) of the present very high price of provisions." Mr. Jekyll

understood that enquiry had been made into the cause of this scarcity of provisions, and he wished to know what the result was of these enquiries. He wished to know whether the scarcity was real or artificial. If real, it became the duty of Executive Government to provide some relief to the poor. If artificial, it became the duty of Executive Government to interfere, and by means of its law officers to enforce more effectually the laws against forestalling and regrating.
May 9, 1795 p. 4.

Gillray's print is clearly intended to provide an answer to that question. But not one that Mr. Jekyll as a Whig would have proposed. For what we see is the most prominent Whig leaders from the Lords and Commons conducting a secret business with the French, shipping cattle, sheep, pigs, flour, and, even guns, to the enemies of Britain, creating a scarcity of those provisions at home and correspondingly driving up prices. The Lords include Norfolk, Bedford, Grafton, Shelburne and Stanhope; the commoners include Fox, Sheridan, Erskine, and Grey.

Apart from the audacity of the accusation, perhaps the most striking thing about this print is the high degree of naturalism. It doesn't immediately look like a caricature. There is nothing exaggerated about the flock of sheep, the herd of cows, or the bags of flour. They are depicted completely realitically. The way the the Duke of Norfolk carries his steaming dumplings in the basket on his head, the way the Duke of Grafton prods his cattle, the way the Duke of Bedford sits on his bags of Bedfordshire flour counting his money—the poses all seem perfectly natural as if they were being observed from life. And against a beautifully depicted horizon of blue sky and puffy-white clouds, a completely convincing French sailing vessel awaits a delivery of supplies.

In light of this extensive display of realism, it is worth remembering that Gillray had been hired for several months in 1793/94 to create sketches from direct observation of soldiers, sailors, munitions, pack horses, boats, and rigging to serve as source material for Phillipe de Loutherbourg's two monumental paintings of British victories on land and sea: The Grand Attack at Valenciennes and the The Battle of the First of June. Fidelity to real life was one of the the primary requirements. And as numerous surviving drawings attest, Gillray more than delivered.

But, in this case, the naturalistic presentation is part of the brilliance of its satire. As its title says, Gillray's print purports to provide the REAL cause of the present high price of provisions. Its effectiveness is thereby strengthened to the extent that he can convince the viewer, if only subliminally, that he is presenting reality, i.e. what is really going on.

Gillray was obviously and understandably proud of this provocative print, signing it as both designer and etcher. It goes well beyond associating the Whig elite with French values and symbols such as the bonnet rouge, the French tri-colour flag as many of his prints do after 1793, or portraying one or more of the Whigs as (literally) sans culottes as he does in A Democrat, or Reason & Philosophy, and The Noble Sans-Culotte, or, as in Patriotic Regeneration predicting what they MIGHT do if France was really successful in invading England. Here he is showing them presently and actively causing the harm afflicting Britons throughout the kingdom. What could be more damning!

Sources and Reading

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