Note 21 — Chapter XII · HOGARTH AND HIS TIME.

The downfall of Sir Robert Walpole, after holding office for twenty years, was preceded by an animated fire of caricature, in which the adherents of Walpole held their own. The specimen given above, entitled "The Motion," was reduced from one of the most famous caricatures of the reign of George II., and one of the most finely wrought of the century.[21] Horace Walpole, son of the great minister, wrote from Florence that the picture had "diverted him extremely," and that the likenesses were "admirable." To us the picture says nothing until it is explained; but every London apprentice of the period recognized Whitehall and the Treasury, toward which the Opposition was driving with such furious haste, and could distinguish most of the personages exhibited. A few days before this caricature appeared, Sandys, who was styled the motion-maker, from the frequency of his attempts to array the House of Commons against the Walpole ministry, moved once more an address to the king, that he would be pleased to remove Sir Robert Walpole from his presence and councils forever. The debate upon this motion was long and most vehement, and though the ministry triumphed, it was one of those bloody victories which presage overthrow. On the same day a similar "motion" was made in the House of Lords by Lord Carteret, where an equally violent discussion was followed by a vote sustaining the ministry. The exultation of the Walpole party inspired this famous caricature, in which we see the Opposition peers trying to reach office in a lordly coach and six, and the Commons trudging toward the same goal on foot, their leader, Pulteney, wheeling a load of Opposition newspapers, and leading his followers by the nose. Every politician of note on the side of the Opposition is in the picture: Lord Chesterfield is the postilion; the Duke of Argyll the coachman; Lord Carteret the gentleman inside the coach, who, becoming conscious of the breakdown, cries, "Let me get out!" Bubb Dodington is the spaniel between the coachman's legs; the footman behind the coach is Lord Cobham, and the outrider Lord Lyttelton. On the side of the Commons there is Sandys, dropping in despair his favorite, often-defeated "Place Bill," and exclaiming, "I thought what would come of putting him on the box?" Much of the humor and point of the picture is lost to us, because the peculiar relations of the persons portrayed to the public, to their party, and to one another can not now be perfectly recalled.