Global Encounters and the Archives: Britain’s Empire in the Age of Horace Walpole

Hibernia in Distress, 1772

Similar to The Able Doctor (1774), this print depicts "Hibernia" (Ireland) as a woman thrown on her back, her harp strings broken (recalling Ireland's harp symbol, while insinuating virgin rape and a broken hymen). Ireland had accrued massive debt and politicians were debating what measures recovery would require. Fourth Viscount George Townshend steps on "Hibernia's" right shoulder and remarks to 1st Earl George Macartney, "Sr. George we must keep her down." The latter adds, "[A]nd exert ourselves or she will be too strong for us." The artist depicts the lord of the Treasury, Jeremiah Dyson, as a black man named, "Mungo," a nickname he had received from the opposition leader, Isaac Barré. However, when Dyson –blamed for failing colonial policies in North America and Ireland –is shown pleading, "Don't forget poor Mungo my good Ld. N –h [Lord North]," Dyson's "blackness" stretches the ostensible point of reference (his failure to acquire an Irish pension). The print suggests that the desire to control "Hibernia" is linked to the desire to control the American colonies and the British West Indies, both its enslaved population and its "unruly" local governments, as well as the increasing number of black people in Great Britain. Catalog Record

Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Library

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