Height: 273 millimetres

Width: 380 millimetres

Text from 'An Illustrative Key to the Political Sketches of H.B.', London 1841:

Many are the points of comparison which will occur to every reflecting mind between a Government and a sheet of ice:- its slipperiness, its frailty, the springs below that undermine its strength, the depths to which those are precipitated under whose feet it gives away, and their small chance of rescue and resuscitation. The unfortunate man who is up to his neck in the water is Lord Glenelg, (lately Mr. C. Grant,) who was the Colonial Secretary at the time of the Canadian revolt; but, though he is the only one of the skating party actually "in for it," it is evident that the whole concern is breaking around him. Lord Melbourne, who hands him his walking-stick, is up to his knees, and Lord John Russell and Mr. Spring Rice, who are holding fast their leader, are already ancle-deep. The figure of John Bull, who seems to be calling for help, may indicate the popularity of the Ministry, even in its sinking state; or it may be intended only to shew that, in the desperate condition to which they seem reduced, they were not wholly unpitied. The contrast between Lord Brougham and the Duke of Wellington is, however, exceedingly striking. While the former looks on with manifest satisfaction, at a calamity which vindicates his reputation as a prophet, the latter, regardless alike of the past and the future, comes down, like a Royal Humane-Society man, with the proper implements, to rescue the sufferer from a watery grave. Whether the complacency which is shewn in the countenance of Lord Glenelg, and his resolution to await the event in perfect tranquillity, be the result of his confidence in the Duke of Wellington's power to save him, or of a frigidity of temperament, which renders him unconscious of his danger, it is difficult to say.