Coalition Dance

Produced just three days after the King (with great reluctance) agreed to allow the Duke of Portland to form a new Coalition ministry, this print shows the principal members of that coalition (from left to right), Frederick Lord North, Charles James Fox, and Edmund Burke celebrating the occasion: "Let us Dance & Sing,—God bless the King,—for he has made us merry Men all."

Coalition Dance

Coalition Dance (First State) [April 5, 1783]
© Trustees of the British Museum

They are dancing around a terminal with a bust of George III whose face is hidden behind the famous Anglican devotional work, The Whole Duty of Man, a detail which may suggest both his embarrassment and his rationale. He is identified by the ironic scroll beneath the bust labeled "K. Wisdom 3d." But Gillray's view of his decision is probably suggested by the fact that the new coalition is dancing to a devil's tune.

North is wearing the blue sash of the Order of the Garter which he had received in 1772. Fox is shown in this first version of the print with the usual fox's head seen in prints like The Lord of the Vineyard, and The Cole Heavers. And because of his perceived sympathies with Irish Catholics. Burke is pictured as a Jesuit monk in robe and sandals as he was in Gillray's earlier Cincinnatus in Retirement (1782).

It is said that politics makes strange bedfellows, and this print can serve as a case in point. While North was Prime Minister (1770 - 1782), Fox and Burke were relentless in their attacks upon him for his (mis)handling of the American war, effectively driving him from office. Rockingham then replaced North as Prime Minister, and Fox, Burke, and the Earl of Shelburne were all part of the new Rockingham administration—Fox as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Burke as Paymaster of the Forces, and Shelburne as Secretary of State for the Home Department. Gillray's view of that administration can be seen in Britania's Assassination, or the Republicans Amusement (1782).

Even while they were part of the Rockingham Ministry, however, there was significant friction between Fox and Shelburne, partly the result of the ambiguity of their responsibilities as Secretaries of State but also because of their very different personalities. But when their Prime Minister, Rockingham, died suddenly and unexpectedly on July 1, 1782, all the hostility between the two men burst into full view. And when the King chose Shelburne as his new Prime Minister, Fox resigned rather than work under a man he despised. He mistakenly calculated, however, that enough of the cabinet members would follow his example to bring down the new administration.

He was wrong. His own example and that of Burke, who followed suit, were not enough to weaken Shelburne. Fox needed an ally to have the votes to bring down the Ministry. So in a stunning act of bad faith, Fox and Burke pretended to find reasons to discredit Shelburne, comparing him (as the book in Burke's hand is intended to remind us) to the wolf in Red Riding Hood and to Catiline of the Catiline Comspiracy, and courted the previously unacceptable North. And amazingly for someone who had seemed devoted to the King, North was willing to dance to the same tune.

Coalition Dance Final State

Coalition Dance (Final State) [April 5, 1783]
© Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

The reference to Shelburne as the wolf in Red Riding Hood created a problem for Gillray. Without any other indicators, Fox's animal head, in the first state of this print, could be mistaken for that of a wolf. So to avoid confusion, Gillray was forced to change his original design and represent Fox with a caricatured face. But except for The Rt Honble Catch Singers, Gillray continued to use the emblematic fox's head for Fox for at least the rest of 1783.

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