POLITICAL ELECTRICITY, OR, AN HISTORICAL & PROPHETICAL PRINT IN THE YEAR 1770 [caption title]

by [British Politics and Colonies]:

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Book desription: [London]: Published according to Act of Parliament, [1770].. Copperplate engraving, 28 x 16 3/4 inches, on two joined sheets. A few old folds. Slight scuff in the bottom edge, obscuring a few words in the key, else fine. A remarkable and rare British print, commenting on the tenuous state of British domestic and colonial politics on the eve of the American Revolution. In this elaborate, thirty-one-panel image electricity is used as a metaphor for political power, and a spark of political power, with disastrous results. Ironically, American patriots including John Adams and Thomas Jefferson also used the metaphor of electricity when describing how the spark of Revolutionary fervor passed through colonies. The print presents a powerful array of images of British society and politics in decline, with commentaries on the growing national debt, the high prices for food staples, the low wages paid to workers, the persecution of John Wilkes, the ruinous policies of the Chatham government, and the corruption of King George III and the royal household. London itself is shown in other panels in flames, animals grazing on the banks of the Thames, the Royal Exchange has been turned into a wilderness, and trading vessels with masts made of broomsticks. In one of the most striking panels the British lion is shown laid out on a table about to be consumed by political ministers led by the Earl of Bute, who already has the animal's genitals on his plate. Attacks on the Earl of Bute, a favorite of King George III and an architect of the Tory resurgence, appear repeatedly in the print, and the entire scene is connected by an electrified chain, which draws its power from an anthropomorphized turbine on the coast of France - which is also identified as the Earl of Bute. The electrical surge moves invisibly through the chain, connecting the corrupt Tory leaders to the King, and powering events. Images of America appear in two key places in the print. The man most associated with electricity, Benjamin Franklin, is pictured in the upper right corner of the print (off the coast of France), flying a kite festooned with petitions. The city of Boston is also featured in the print (its skyline closely resembling that of London), with industrious colonists at work in the foreground. The text key that relates to this panel criticizes the British government for imposing the Stamp Act and other internal taxes "contrary to ye true spirit of British policy," and states that Boston will take the place of London as a virtuous city. "The design [of the print] is political satire as complex colloquial art, a densely allusive lattice-work of the misfortunes of the imperial British polity on the eve of the American Revolution...In this broadsheet, politics are electric and electricity political...Recent political history converges with prophecy through a narrative chain (the electrical chain) of violent self- destruction: the suppression of British liberties, the rise of corruption and militarism, the wrecking of trade and commerce, the disintegration of the British state, and the rise of America" - Delbourgo. This is one of two states of this print, with this one signed "Mercurius & Apelles fect." The other state of the print is signed "Veridicus & Junius fect." The attributed creator of this print, Richard Whitworth, who signed himself "Veridicus" ("speaker of truth"), was an opposition member of Parliament from Stafford, and an ardent supporter of political and economic change in Britain. The print is also mockingly captioned "Bute & Wilkes invent.," a jab at the Earl of Bute, in contrast to John Wilkes, the ardent Parliamentary critic. The imprint line stating that this print was "published according to Act of Parliament" is also done in jest. OCLC locates only two copies, at the Library of Congress and the Society of the Cincinnati Library. We locate another copy in the British Museum catalogue. Rare, and an incredibly striking image of a corrupt England and a virtuous America. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION IN DRAWINGS AND PRINTS 656. STEPHENS, CATALOGUE OF PRINTS AND DRAWINGS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM IV:4422, pp.649-60. STEVENS, HISTORICAL NUGGETS, p.600. OCLC 51137874. James Delbourgo, "Political Electricity: The Occult Mechanism of Revolution" in COMMON- PLACE (Vol. 5, no. 1, October 2004) (http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/cp/ vol-05/no-01/lessons/). FOWBLE, TWO CENTURIES OF AMERICAN PRINTS 88.

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