A comic print showing a crowd of people in a room labelled 'Treasury.' Heaps of gold are scattered across the floor, and several of the men are picking up gold coins with shovels, pouring it into bags, baskets and in one case a pair of trousers, or carrying bulging sacks and barrels out of the room through a 'secret door.' Along the bottom right edge, the burglars' tools are scattered on the floor: masks, keys, shovels, and a covered lantern. In the bottom left corner, a grotesque bust looms out of the gold, clutching more moneybags. From left to right: a man wearing a turban and carrying a fabric-wrapped bundle says 'Take care of Number One!' A judge in a black gown and long wig wields a shovel and says 'I never care how the world wags For I've 4000 per annum secure in my bags.' Two men confer in the background behind another enormous bronze bust. A bald man (Spencer Perceval) shovels gold, saying 'Come along Leather breeches, what the devil makes your hair stand on end always?' In the background, one man tells another 'get out of the way pat you have no more business here than I have.' A man in a red coat with hair standing on end holds a pair of trousers open for Perceval. Two stereotypical Scots stand close together, one saying 'you are right Mr McScroyle I have feathered my own nest well,' the other replying 'the de'er tak me but I've taken care o' myself'. A fat man stands with his hands behind his back beside a basket heaped with gold and labelled 'Billy's Biscuit Basket.' A man carries a barrel of gold on his head: it is labelled 'Cambridge Butter Tub.' A man in a blue coat and periwig carries a bag of gold, more gold spills out of his pockets. Three further men are on their way out of the door; one of them says 'I have croaked for something.' Above the 'secret door' a map of the United Kingdom hangs in shreds. On the back wall, from left to right, a series of portraits portray: the back of a man's head; the devil stealing public money; Perceval leading an infant prince of wales and saying 'that's my pitty pincy'; King Lear exclaiming 'What what!' over the dead body of his daughter; the devil appearing amongst 'the lawyers.' Below the image the title 'State Miners' is printed in capitals; the publication details have been added in ink as well as a note identifying the 'biscuit basket' man as 'Curtis.'

State Miners

George Cruikshank

1811

Hand-coloured etching

British Museum 1868,0808.12616

Image credit: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Opportunists freely plunder from the chaotic national Treasury following the second - ultimately final - deterioration of George III’s health, and the resultant power struggles in government.

Like many satires, this print is ruthlessly critical of the government: the Prime Minister Spencer Perceval shovels gold into a pair of trousers, while various other political figures appear as crude, greedy caricatures.

However, Cruikshank is unusual in acknowledging the apparent trigger for the king’s decline: the recent death of his favourite daughter, Princess Amelia. A painting of Lear mourning the dead Cordelia shows the king exclaiming George’s famous ‘what what’. Even so, Cruikshank is careful to keep the comment to the print’s compositional sidelines.

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Letter to the Prince of Wales

Sir Lucas Pepys

1788

Pepys letter to the Prince of Wales

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King Lear

William Sharp (1749-1824), after Joshua Reynolds (1723-92)

1783

King Lear

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The Union Club Masquerade

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