The American war, and the ill-advised colonial legislation which brought it on, gave rise to many caricatures, some of them of considerable merit. The first of which a transcript is given us by Mr Fairholt's graver, relates to the Boston tea-riots of 1770. In it Lord North is pouring tea down the throat of America, personified by a half-naked woman with a crown of feathers, who rejects the unwelcome draught in his lordship's face. Britannia weeps in the background, and Lord Chancellor Mansfield, the compiler of the obnoxious acts, holds down the victim. When war actually broke out, and the bloody fight of Bunker's Hill gave a foretaste of its disasters, satires fell thick upon the ministry as well as upon the king, whose will, the Opposition maintained, was law with Lord North's cabinet. In June 1776 a long poem, smart enough, but very violent and unpatriotic, was published under the title of _Lord Chatham's Prophecy_. "Your plumèd corps though Percy cheers, And far-famed British grenadiers, Renown'd for martial skill; Yet Albion's heroes bite the plain, Her chiefs round gallant Howe are slain, On fallow Bunker's Hill." Subsequent verses foretell all manner of evils to Great Britain, and the whole poem breathes a spirit of exultation at our reverses, which would have been less ungraceful from an American than from an English pen, and which, at the present day, no amount of party feeling would be held to justify. But the shamelessness of Whiggery was then at its height; the pseudo-patriots of the time recked little of their country's misfortunes when these gave them opportunity of triumph over a political antagonist. What cared they for the reverses of British arms, or the lopping off of Britain's colonies, if they thereby saw themselves nearer the possession of the place and power whose emoluments they so greedily coveted? Charles Fox, with his faro-purse empty and an execution in his house, could hardly afford to be particular as to the strict cleanliness of the path to the treasury bench. Then or never was the moment to sacrifice public weal to private advantage. And accordingly, when, "on the 3d December 1777, the Court was thunderstruck with the disastrous intelligence of the surrender of General Burgoyne and his army at Saratoga, the Opposition could hardly conceal their exultation: the disgrace and loss which had fallen on the British arms were exaggerated, and chanted about the streets in doggerel ballads." An "Ode on the success of his Majesty's Arms," written in December, and printed in the _Foundling Hospital for Wit_, celebrates ironically the glorious results of the campaign, and the skill and prudence of the ministers at home; and ends with a congratulation on the old tale of King George's mechanical amusements:--