British PM on the Toilet Passing Paper Money (1797)
Like when Liz Truss stunned financial markets and threw the British pound into a tailspin?
In 1797, in the midst of an expensive war with France, England decreed that its national bank would no longer redeem banknotes for gold and silver. The Bank Restriction Act authorized a mass increase in paper currency to replace the withdrawn coinage.
Two weeks after its passage, the period’s leading caricaturist, James Gillray, vilified the policy in this satire. It features an ass-eared, gold-engorged William Pitt, Prime Minister of Great Britain, squatting over the commode-like rotunda of the Bank of England, evacuating paper from both orifices. Adapting the Midas legend, the print, like the caricatures of 1720, lampoons the idea of paper credit as an unhinged alchemical fantasy.
Context:
In 1720, everyday citizens converged on the banking streets of Paris, London, and Amsterdam, speculating in New World trading companies and other maritime ventures. By the close of that year, an unprecedented bull market would culminate in the world’s first international financial crash.
Orchestrated by the insolvent governments of France and England, and fueled by illusions of colonial wealth, these investment bonanzas—henceforth known as the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles—have remained synonymous with the temptations of get-rich-quick schemes and the dangers of herd behavior.
The South Sea and Mississippi Bubbles reverberated throughout the eighteenth century, an age of fierce colonial rivalry and recurring economic crises for both England and France. The bubbles left their mark culturally and politically too. They gave rise to a public possessed of an irrepressible appetite for both economic news and financial satire. Echoes of the 1720 crash resounded at the end of the century, when both governments began printing paper money on a large scale, ushering in new waves of optimism mixed with distrust
Three centuries and many booms and busts later, their imprint is indelible. Not only did the bubbles accelerate the growth of a financial system overflowing with stock shares, newly created banknotes, and other mysterious paper devices imbued with financial alchemy—they also illustrated the power of trust and dread, faith and fear, as drivers of market volatility. ~ NY Public Library
Title: "MIDAS, Transmuting all into Gold [Gold crossed out] PAPER."
Artist: James Gillray (British, 1756–1815)
Date: 1797
Medium: Hand-colored etching and engraving
Source: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. "MIDAS, Transmuting all into Gold [Gold crossed out] PAPER." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1797.