A great number of caricatures arose out of the
Sacheverell business in the reign of Queen Anne.
The reverend doctor, who was a renegade from
Whiggism, had become a vehement Tory and
assertor of High Church principles, and in that
capacity he preached a sermon at St. Paul's,
before the Lord Mayor and Corporation, on the
5th of November, 1709, of so violent a character
towards the Dissenters and their friends, the
principles of the revolution, and the Whig Lord
Treasurer, Godolphin, that it was determined
to impeach the author. In the meanwhile, the
Tories caused the sermon to be printed and
extensively circulated; and when the trial of
Sacheverell ended in his inhibition for three
years, the condemnation of his discourse, and
the burning of a copy of it by the common
hangman, an immense excitement seized on the
nation, and a series of riots ensued of a very
alarming character. High church clergymen
preached incendiary sermons; money is said to
have been distributed among the mob; several
encounters took place in the streets; dissenting
places of worship were sacked and burnt;
in short, ferocious intolerance was exhibited.
The commotion was fruitful in ballads and
caricatures, and not merely on the side of Sacheverell.
The Whigs were not idle, and Mr. Wright gives a
specimen of the kind of satirical prints they sent
forth against their opponents. We here see
Sacheverell in the act of writing his sermon. He
is prompted on one side by the Pope, and on
the other by the Devil; and the title of the
engraving is "The Three False Brethren." In
retaliation for this, the High Church party
caricatured Bishop Hoadly, a Low Church friend
of the Dissenters, in a print in which Satan
is represented as closeted with the prelate,
whose infirmities are coarsely ridiculed. They
also parodied the Sacheverell caricature,
putting a mitred bishop in the place of the Pope,
and making the Devil fly away in terror from
the doctor's pen. The oddest thing done at
that period, however, was the issue of a medal
with a head of Sacheverell on one side, and
on the other a device and inscription which
varied in different copies, so as to suit the
predilections of both parties. The caricatures of
the Sacheverell days are to be found in the
collection of Mr. Hawkins. "In general," says
Mr. Wright, "they are equally poor in design
and execution." The figure or head of the
clerical hero was introduced into all kinds of
articles of ornament or use. Tobacco-stoppers,
seals for letters, coat-buttons, &c., were made
to take sides, and the general excitement was
stimulated by every art that could possibly be
pressed into the service.

On the accession of George the First, and the
return of the Whigs to power after the brief
ascendancy of Harley and Bolingbroke, the former
of those Ministers was made the subject of a
caricature which seems now not to be in
existence. The object was to represent the Earl
as the tool of the French King and the Pretender
—an imputation which he had drawn on himself
by the precipitate and disadvantageous peace
he had concluded after Marlborough's brilliant
victories, and by his intrigues against the House
of Hanover.

The famous South Sea Bubble furnished
abundant matter for literary and pictorial
satirists to turn to account. The earliest English
caricature on this disastrous speculation is
entitled "The Bubblers bubbled; or, the Devil
take the Hindmost." It contained a great many
figures: a circumstance which seems to have been
regarded as a recommendation, for another
caricature of the same period was advertised as
presenting "nigh eighty figures." This was in
1720, and in the same year a large number of
"Bubble" caricatures were issued in France
and Holland. In the latter country, several of
these, together with satirical plays and songs
on the same subject, were collected and
published in a folio volume, entitled "The Great
Picture of Folly." So great was the demand
for such productions, and so easily were people
satisfied with anything in the shape of a pictorial
satire on the madness of the hour, that old
engravings were re-issued with a verbal
application to the various bubble companies, though
the figures could hardly be twisted by the
utmost ingenuity to any interpretation of current
events. In England, packs of "bubble cards"
were largely sold—an idea apparently derived
from the caricature playing-cards of the time
of the Commonwealth. In the sets belonging to
the latter age, each card was embellished with
an engraving representing some preposterous
scheme, accompanied by four lines of verse.
In many cases both pictures and verses were
pointed and epigrammatic. The English
caricatures of that time, however, are said to be
very inferior to the Dutch.

But an Englishman of signal genius in the
department of comic and tragi-comic art was
on the eve of making himself famous. Hogarth's
first caricature was published in 1721, and its
subject was the company-forming mania of the
previous year.

The general election of 1722, under the
administration of Sir Robert Walpole, led to the
production of many caricatures by the Tory
party, who were then very much in the shade.
The Tories complained, and not without reason,
that the Whigs resorted to a most extensive
system of bribery, and, being in opposition, they
were of course severely virtuous. In Applebee's
Original Weekly Journal, of January
6th, 1722—a Tory publication—the following
editorial note occurs: "Altho' we think
the appointing general meetings of the gentlemen
of counties, for making agreements for
votes for the election of a new Parliament
before the old Parliament is expir'd, is a most
scandalous method and an evident token of
corruption, yet we find it daily practic'd, and,
which is worse, publickly own'd, particularly in
the county of Surrey, where the very names of
the candidates are publish'd, and the votes of
the freeholders openly sollicited in the publick
prints. The like is now doing, or preparing to
be done, for Buckinghamshire; and we are
told, likewise, that it is doing for other counties
also." There cannot be a doubt that Walpole