The _modus operandi_ by which the address was promoted is fancifully summed up in the plate of the _Oxford Magazine_, vol. ii., p. 134, “The Principal Merchants and Traders assembled at the Merchant Seamen’s Office, to sign ye Address.” This print represents a further stage in the progress of the transaction. The _Public Advertiser_, March 11, 1769, announces, “For these two Days past, numbers of the Merchants and principal Traders of London have attended at the Merchant Seamen’s Office, over the Royal Exchange, in order to sign an Address to his Majesty, etc.” It is stated in the _Oxford Magazine_, “So eager were the ministers to procure a long list of subscribers that, it is credibly reported, some of the addresses of the then ‘City Merchants,’ were signed by cobblers, porters, chairmen, livery-servants, and the very meanest of the rabble; for as the number of hands was the chief point of view, they cared but little of what rank or condition they were.” The caricaturist has carried out this view of the signatories. The chairman or president is a butcher, whose tray, containing a shoulder of mutton, is laid down at his feet; he is filled with loyal frenzy, and, with his butcher’s knife grasped ready for action, is exclaiming, “I shall stick my knife in _Magna Charta_, and cut up the carcase of the Bill of Rights.” A porter, with his knot, is anathematizing Wilkes’s “swivel eyes,” and wishing he “may sink under his load.” The petition is being signed by a barber, with his bowl under his arm, together with an aldermanic wig just ordered: “Ah, I’ve got an order for a new wig, only for signing my name.” A Scotch pedlar, with pack and staff, one of Lord Bute’s followers, declares, “Sawney mun sign too, gin it be to the De’il, for my guid laird’s sake.” A journeyman baker, with a basketful of loaves on his back, is coming in succession, well paid for his assistance: “Brother Merchants, follow my example, and you’ll never want bread;” and even a sooty chimney-sweep has expectations of ministerial patronage, “Who knows but I may be appointed to a Chimney at Court?” Prominent among those at the table whereon is the much-denounced “Address,” is a Jew money-jobber, who is elated at his prospects of a Treasury “job,” “Oh! for a large portion of scrip!” and the Dutch stockbroker, Van Scrip, is exclaiming, “Ah! de gross Scrip for Mynheer too,”--the subscription scrip to government loans, profitable to those who secured preference allotments, and, as described, alleged to be manipulated by the ministry in the nature of bribery.