A Shrewd Guess or the Farmers Definition of Parliamentary Debates

Charles Williams

A Shrewd Guess or the Farmers Definition of Parliamentary Debates

London, Thomas Tegg, ca. 1813

Etching

Original hand colouring

250 x 350 mm

£220

A farm-house kitchen. The farmer’s wife (left) sits beside a table on which are a tray of tea-things and a tankard. She carves a loaf, holding it on her lap, and asks: “I dont understand what they mean by they Debates, cans’t thee tell Robins?” The stout farmer sits full-face, holding a newspaper: ‘Liverpool Journal’. He answers: “Why I take it it means this!— th’ men ith Parliament up at Lunnon makes sham quarrels; and then grins at us folk ith country for believen un to be in Arnest!!” The son, a young man wearing a smock, sits in the ingle-nook (right) holding a knife and slice of bread, and eagerly watched by a dog. He says: “Eh Feather! why that be just like Dr Solomon w’th folks that swallow his balm of Gulllad [Gilead].” After the title,
“He laughs at him: in’s face too,
“O you mistake him; t’was an humble grin,
The fawning joy of courtiers and of dogs.”