The Evacuations or An Emetic for Old England Glorys (BM 1904,0819.712)

Satire on Lord Bute and the terms of the peace preliminaries at the end of the Seven Years War. In the centre is Bute as a mountebank on an outdoor stage with an ass's head, wearing a kilt and Scotch bonnet with a peacock's feather thistle (in the second state he also wears a collar of fleur-de-lis). He blows bubbles one labelled "Peace", another bears a coronet, and others figures representing sums of money for his followers who reach eagerly for them. He tramples on the arms of the City of London and the staff and cap of liberty, and holds a plaid blindfold around the eyes of Britannia while she vomits the names of British conquests in the war into a bowl decorated with fleur-de-lis held by a monkey; Britannia wears a plaid shawl and to her shield has been added a thistle and the cross of St Andrew. To the left are Tobias Smollett wearing a tartan waistcoat, sniffing a doctor's cane and taking Britannia's pulse (in the second state, a copy of the Briton protrudes from his pocket), and Henry Fox preparing to administer a large clyster; he holds a heavy bag with a prescription from Smollett reading, "Soupe Maigre / Ry Caledon: cacoeines aa / Ligna Calcea: Q: S:/ fiat onixt / Pro Brit Anus / T[obias]. S[mollett]. M. D." On far left is a shop outside which hangs a sugar loaf and a sign advertising "Fine Teas Tobacco and Havannah Snuff / Never Nose & Co from over ye way" (in the second state "by Velasque" is added after "Snuff"); on a balcony stand a Dutchman and a French man without a nose (the Duke of Nivernois, French ambassador) who is taking snuff (in the second state a Spaniard is inserted behind them); a scroll hanging from the balcony reads, "England to have Minorca & Three neutral islands / Peace" (in the second state the word "only" is added before Minorca). On the right another shop with the sign of the fleur-de-lis and a board over the door with a fool's cap lettered "Fine Barreld Cod &c. From Newfoundland sold here by Louis Baboon"; a playbill pasted to the building reads, "Theatre Royal by Command the Comedy of Errors"; hanging from a pole is a show-cloth with, in the first state, a picture of two ostriches and the words "A Live" , and in the second state, "is ther not some chosen curse / Some hidden Thunder in the / Stores of Heaven, Red with / uncommon Wrath, to blast the Man / Who owes his Greatness to his / Country's Ruin / Cato."
Etched below, the title and eight stanzas illustrated in the image; in the centre, a pole at the top of which is a boot and at the foot an axe lettered "1745". In the second state the pole has a number of additions: a collar like Bute's but partly made of thistles; a heart with a fleur-de-lis, the cross of St Louis and a riband lettered, "The Boot made of French Leather belonging to a Kt of St Andrew and St Louis". December 1762

Etching