The title continues: 'me teach de english republicans to work. - scene. A ploughed field'. Beneath the title is etched on a separate plate: 'description - a row of english people in tatters, and wooden shoes, hoeing a field of garlic. A tall raw-boned frenchman, with a long queue behind, like a slave driver with a long waggoner's whip in each hand, walking by their side. The people very sulky, but tolerably obedient & tractable for so short a time; john bull being a bad lad only when you are very good to him. The group of the hoers are, a husbandman, his wife, a manufacturer, a curate, & an old man; - in another part of the field [middle distance, left], four other english people, a father & son (husbandmen) with two seamen, in a yoke, drawing a plough; a french farmer guiding it with one hand, & with the other flourishing & cracking a french postillion's long whip; a french boy walking by the side of the yoke with a goad, which has a point as sharp as a needle, the french hoe-driver gives his instructions thus: "jacques roast-beef, hoe straight, deep, quick & rest not. " - the instructions of the french holder of the plough are - "monsieur john bull mon ami", (in english) my friend, mr john bull, pull hard, plough deep, trot quick, turn sudden, & rest not," - a messager d'etat, (in english) a messenger of state in his habit of office, with a letter in his hand, comes to hurry on the work for the exigencies of war. - in another part of the plate [left] stand the farm offices; a vast oak, withered, above them, - a caldron boiling, on which is engraved, soup maigre, with a stack of onions & turnips close by it. On a large board is painted - "regulations of this farm. , - ["at five o'clock in the morning the hogs & english slaves are \ "to be fed; at twelve o'clock at night they are to be suppered, \ "& littered up with the best straw that the scotch & irish part \ "of the slaves can steal from the neighbouring farms, & then \ "locked up. But there are holes in the bottom of the walls \ "for the hogs to go out, & get the benefit of fresh air. - \ "punishment of laziness, for the first offence, five hundred \ "lashes; for the second, the guillotine. All other crimes, ex \ "-cept those which affect frenchmen, are forgiven on promise \ "of amendment. " - a ballad is lying on the ground in the english language, entitled, "recantation of british \ & irish republican husbandmen & manufacturers. - the burden of the song is - "oh, england, england! \ "king, wife, sons & daughters of our king, of \ "whom the sons are all brave, & the daughters \ "all beautiful: parliament & judges, who covered \ "us with blessings, which are repaid with reproaches. \ "clergy who taught us to die as well as to live for \ "our country - landaff, landaff. - nobles & \ "squires in whose hospitality & bounty we shared. - \ "st vincents & duncans. Merchants, master manufacturer[s] \ "who lived as simply as ourselves, but both of us well; "how could we forget you? you would not have de- \ "serted us; but we deserted you. - but with the same \ "weapons which should have defended you, we will \ "punish ourselves. We despise life, we could submit to \ "misfortune, but cannot bear the consciousness of \ "not having stood or fallen with you. Oh england, \ "england, country of every bliss, for ever farewell!' [dalrymple, op. Cit. , pp. 5-6, 33-5. ]
the hoe-driver stands on the left of the line of hoers (right), who advance diagonally. The husbandman is a fat john bull, his wife a comely woman. Beyond the 'old man' is a fifth man on the extreme right gillray has added in the foreground a ragged hoer suspiciously like fox, cf. Bmsat 9180, &c. The four men yoked to the plough do not resemble seamen. The print otherwise follows the description; the 'messager d'état' is dressed exactly as in bmsat 9213. All the englishmen wear large wooden shoes, emblems of servitude. 1 march 1798
hand-coloured etching. Date: 1798. Dimensions: Height: 409 mm; Width: 399 mm. Medium: paper. Depicted People: Princess Amelia. Collection: British Museum. Consequences of a successfull French invasion. No III. Plate 2d- (BM 1868,0808.10381)
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