“Britons brave are true and unconfin’d, To lash the Coxcombs of the Age design’d; Fixt to no Party, censure all alike, And the distinguish’d Villain sure to strike; Pleas’d we behold the great maintain the Cause, And Court and Country join the loud applause.” [Illustration: GREAT BRITAIN’S UNION; OR, THE LITCHFIELD RACES. 1747. [_Page 114._] Strong Jacobite imputations are farther conveyed in the pictorial version of “Great Britain’s Union; or, the Litchfield Races, 1747.” Both Whig and Tory parties, not content with the legitimate and recognized contests of the hustings, and their ultimate goal, the senate, carried their partisan proclivities on to the racecourse, and ministerial and opposition stakes were alternately put into competition on the same turf. Thus, at Lichfield were held Tory race weeks, succeeded by similar gatherings on the part of their opponents. Some rather extraordinary doings occurred there, the general description of which is conveyed by the caricature; the two factions by some means came into collision, and his Grace of Bedford received a sound hiding with a horsewhip as an acknowledgment of his services to the House of Hanover and his antagonism to the Patriotic party, denounced as Jacobites by their Hanoverian rivals; Earl Gower, and his modish son, Lord Trentham, were also roughly handled. Various freaks of an extravagant nature were performed, ladies and gentlemen of the Patriotic faction appearing dressed in Scottish plaids. In the design this circumstance is specially embodied: a party of enthusiasts, assembled in a booth on the course, are toasting the Pretender, whose sun is seen in the distance, falsely depicted as in the ascendant. A despondent grenadier outside the Jacobite head-quarters, is grumbling, “We are rode by Germans;” a cradle, a Gallic cock, and a _fleur-de-lis_ allude to the Chevalier and the French assistance lent to his pretensions; overhead several hands are seen clasped, with the suggestive legend, “A-greed.” A Frenchified person, pointing to a gamecock fighting his own shadow, is denouncing the Duke (of Bedford) in no measured terms; under his right arm is the whip with which the duke was castigated, and in the left hand of this valorous bravo is a paper, “We have courage.” As usual, the Devil is present, and this time he is flying off with “Information,” possibly to be laid before his dear friends in office. A sort of zany, seated beneath a flag marked, “And curse upon denial” (alluding to equivocation on the part of several), is giving the starting signal. The Scotch plaid-clad jockey riding for the Chevalier is beating the Hanoverian jockey on the traditional “White Horse.” This highly fanciful conception, the reverse of actual experience, is hailed with extravagant delight by the excited assembly; the occupants of the Grand Stand are described as “Don Juan and his friends at the place of Desert.” Various ballads and satirical