[Illustration: WESTMINSTER--THE TWO-SHILLING BUTCHER. 1747.] Lord Trentham’s selection as a lord of the admiralty occurred somewhat later (1749). The second candidate was Admiral Sir Peter Warren, who, as usual, was supported by a mob of Jack Tars, or of ruffians dressed in sailors’ clothes for the occasion, a common party subterfuge at the Westminster elections. The candidates put forward for the suffrages of the “Independent Electors,” and who came out of the contest ingloriously, were, as first announced, Sir Thomas Clarges (one of the stewards of the association) and Sir John Phillips (who was a steward in 1744); after a ten-days’ canvass the latter declined to proceed in his candidature, on the plea of ill health, and Sir Thomas Dyke was put up in his stead. Early in the contest a well-executed caricature, in the manner of Boitard or Gravelot, both artists being contemporary with Hogarth, was offered to the public under the title of “The Two-Shilling Butcher.” It was at this election that the highest personages canvassed. The Duke of Cumberland and the Prince of Wales appeared in support of the rival factions. In the pictorial view of this situation, Lord Trentham, a dandified person dressed in the extreme of French taste, is in conference with his “backer” the “Two-Shilling Butcher,” who has been supposed by Thomas Wright and other authorities to represent the “Culloden Butcher,” _i.e._ the Duke of Cumberland. Mr. F. G. Stephens, who has described all the early caricatures in the Hawkins Collections with the utmost pains and minutiæ, sets down this personage as Mr. Butcher, the agent to the Duke of Bedford, whose residence is introduced in the rear. However, the figure in the present version corresponds with similar representations of the stout Cumberland Butcher; moreover, an allusion to cattle put into the mouth of this personage strongly indicates, by analogy with other caricatures on “horned cattle,” that none other than the duke is meant. The results of the election were at this time uncertain. The affected lordling, also satirized as Sir Silkington, is drawling, “Curs me! you’d buy me, ye Brutes, at 2_s._ p. Head _Bona fide_?” to which the figure travestied as a butcher, with apron, knife, and steel, is responding, “My Lord, there being a Fatality in ye Cattle, that there is 3000 above my Cut, tho’ I offered handsome.” The “3000” presumably refers to the Association of Independent Electors, who, at the previous poll (1741), registered for the “patriot” candidates (Vernon and Edwin), but were found wanting in 1747, as the figures at the close of the poll demonstrated. The Duke of Bedford’s residence is introduced to recall the circumstance that he and the candidate were close matrimonial connections, the duke having married the eldest daughter of John, Earl Gower. In front of this building, with the “bustos” of sphinxes above the posts of the gateway, is another important personage, who