Smelling out a Rat...
The long nose and spectacles of Edmund Burke who had recently published his Reflections on the Revolution in France appear in a dream-like cloud, disturbing the midnight musings of Dr. Richard Price, a dissenting minister, and supporter of both the American and French Revolutions. Burke is shown upholding as he does in his Reflections, the monarchy (Crown) and Religion (Cross) against the perceived threats posed by Price and other English supporters of the French Revolution.
© Trustees of the British Museum
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The nature of these threats is seen in the details of the print. Price is interrupted as he is supposedly writing a tract entitled, On the Benefits of Anarchy, Regicide, Atheism. At his feet is an open book, a Treatise on the ill effects of Order & Government in Society, and on the absurdity of serving God, & honoring the King. And on the wall behind him is a picture entitled the Death of Charles II or, the Glory of Great Britain, showing the beheading of Charles in England's first and less than glorious revolution.
As the directive beneath the title Vide: A Troubled Conscience suggests, the whole phantasmagorical scene is cast as the workings of Price's own conscience, mulling over the arguments of Burke's Reflections. And indeed that work WAS specifically addressed as a rebuttal to Price's earlier sermon and pamplet, A Discourse on the Love of our Country.
Though thoroughly misrepresenting Price's own intentions at the time, Gillray's print was prescient in at least two respects. The French Revolution did degenerate into anarchy and regicide. And Price did, in fact, have a change of heart, distancing himself from the revolution's more radical supporters and condemning its increasing political violence.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on Smelling out a Rat...
- Draper Hill, Fashionable Contrasts, 1966, #3
- Nicholas K Robinson, Edmund Burke: A Life in Caricature, 1996
- "Richard Price," Wikipedia
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #45
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