Hardly was Napoleon despatched to the island prison which was so shortly to prove his grave, and replaced by the unwieldly Louis, than the latter came in for his full share of satire. In another of George Cruikshank's caricatures of the same year, he shows us _The Royal Laundress_ [Louis the Eighteenth] _Washing Boney's Court Dresses_, Napoleon watching the process the while from St. Helena. "Ha, ha!" he laughs, "such an old woman as _you_ might rub a long while before they'll be all white, for they are tri-coloured in _grain_." Another shows us fat Louis climbing the _mat de cocagne_ (soaped pole) and clutching the crown of France; he clambers up on the shoulders of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, his immediate supporter being England. Napoleon watches his progress from across the sea; "_I_ climbed up," he says, "twice, without _any_ help." Other subjects of the year are: _Friends in Need_, and _John's Dream, or the Prince and Old England for Ever!_ 1816. AVERSION OF THE REGENT TO RETRENCHMENT. The repugnance of the Regent to the economical measures which were forced upon the ministry in 1816 is well-known. The people complained with every just reason of the pressure of taxes, which were levied, as they said, upon the industrious, to be squandered in extravagant salaries, sinecures, and unmerited pensions. They complained of the large standing army, which the Regent insisted to be necessary for the maintenance of "our position and high character among the European powers." The prince's aversion to the popular cry for retrenchment and reform is shown by one of George's caricatures entitled, _Sick of the Property Tax, or Ministerial Influenza_, published by Fores on the 8th of March, 1816, where we see the ministers vomiting into a huge receptacle labelled "Budget," the matter voided consisting of "Standing armies," "Property tax," "Increase of salaries," and so on. The gouty, self-indulgent prince hobbles up to his ministers on a pair of crutches marked respectively, "More economy" and "Increase of income." Under his arms he carries bundles of accounts, most of which relate to his own private expenditure, and are labelled, "Expenses of [Brighton] Pavilion," of "Furniture," "Drinking expenses." "Aye, this comes," he exclaims, "of your cursed pill economy, which you forced me to take a month back; no one knows what I have suffered from this economical spasm. I am afraid we shall all be laid up together." On the table behind him lie the medicines which have been prescribed for him, certain pills labelled "Petitions against the property tax," and a huge bolus ticketed "economy," "to be taken immediately." On the same subject a month later on is a sketch by an amateur, etched by the artist, bearing the title of _Economical Humbug of 1816, or Saving at the Spiggot and Letting Out at the Bunghole_. From a series of small vats, "Assessed taxes," "Property tax," "Customs," "Excise," and other streams of