The “Men in the Moon” series (1820), forerunners of Mr. Albert Smith’s “Man in the Moon,” is all levelled at the Liberals, or Radicals: Cobbett and Hunt, as representatives of the _Weekly Register_ and _Reform_, appear as the agents of Satan. A little devil (his Satanic majesty figured largely in all the caricatures of the time, and most public men in their turn were humorously given over to him) perched on a gibbet is waiting, no doubt impatiently, for the souls of the Radicals. A big devil clutches cloven-hoofed Lord Byron, “The Lord of the Faithless,” and points to the distant gibbet Hunt, “knocked out of time” in a pugilistic encounter with Lord Castlereagh, is being “attended to” by his friends--the devil and Cobbett. But so bad were the Radical leaders, that the friendship even of the devil is at last denied them. They appear, with other Radicals, as the political hydra, and their faithless friend Satan, with his pitchfork, is lending a hand to Lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth, for their destruction. They have an awful end in the hydra’s skin, being nailed by the tail to a gibbet, and burned amidst the rejoicing shouts of “the first gentleman in Europe,” the Iron Duke, and the King’s ministers. But in “The Man in the Moon” the impartial caricaturist has his fling at the King and his ministers. Here the Goddess of Reason protects the liberty of the press from the gag and dagger, which are presented by Lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth, and Canning. The Prince Regent, mounted upon Lord Sidmouth’s back, shoots at the cup of liberty. And now his Royal Highness is Guy Fawkes carried by his favourites, Castlereagh and Sidmouth. It was at this time, when Hone appeared tied to a whipping-post, supplied by Cruikshank’s needle, that the artist illustrated “The Bank Restriction Barometers,” for the incorrigible Radical of Fleet Street, who probably revenged himself upon Cruikshank in St. James’s Street, by under-paying him in the city. The “Barometer” was ingeniously illustrated: at top, Britannia in the full tide of prosperity; at bottom, weeping and dejected, with ships wrecked and children hanged. The gibbet played as conspicuous a part in these daily squibs as the devil.