In Cruikshank’s broadside here reproduced the future President of the Board of Control is represented twirling his thumbs in enforced retirement and with full leisure to repent of his indiscretions. Above the mantelpiece representations of St. Stephen’s and Newgate are placed in sharp contrast. Below the last a former occupant of the {72} cell has scratched a rude gibbet. The grate is empty. On the table stand an empty pewter pot and pipe. On the wall is seen a long quotation from his anonymous pamphlet _A Trifling Mistake_, for which he has been committed to prison. This, with a barbed addition, gives the title to the broadside itself. The quotation runs:— “What prevents ye people from walking down to ye house and pulling out ye members by ye ears, locking up their doors and flinging ye key into ye Thames? Is it any majesty which lodges in the members of that assembly? Do we love them? Not at all: we have an instinctive horror and disgust at the very abstract idea of ye boroughmonger. Do we respect them? Not in the least. Do we regard them as endowed with any superior qualities? On the contrary, there is scarcely a poorer creature than your mere member of Parliament; though, in his corporate capacity, ye earth furnishes not so absolute a bully. Their true practical protectors, then—the real efficient anti-reformers,—are to be found at ye Horse Guards and ye Knightsbridge Barracks. As long as the House of Commons majorities are backed by the regimental muster roll, so long may those who have got the tax power keep it and hang those who resist”!!! !!! !!! Vide _Trifling Mistake_. Below this hangs a bill headed “Little Hob in the Well.” {73} The reproduction of the etching here given is from a very interesting touched proof in the British Museum. Upon it the artist’s work in pencil can be plainly traced. To the right of the picture of Newgate another roughly drawn gibbet can be distinguished. On the bill the words have been added, “A New Song in Defence of the People, corrected,” etc. The profile of the prisoner has been carefully reduced, and a punning sub-title to the whole added, “How Cam you to be in that Hobble?” The date on the margin is January 1, 1819 (obviously a mistake for 1820), and its publication, no doubt, went some way towards Hobhouse’s election as member for Westminster, which took place immediately after his release on the 20th day of the month in the year 1820. After his elevation to the peerage Hobhouse took no active part in public affairs. He died as lately as 1869, leaving no issue. Probably the plate was suppressed on the ground that it contained the long quotation given above from the lawless pamphlet for which he was imprisoned.