The commissioners

Darly, Mary, probably by

Hand-coloured etching from a composite album of 97 folios (147 prints) of comic illustrations under the title Darly's Comic Prints of Characters, Caricatures, Macaronies &c., published by Mary and Matthew Darly in London in 1778. This print was first advertised as ‘impolitical’ together with 'The Commissioners Interview with Congress' and 'Poor Old England'. The five Commissioners – William Howe, 5th Viscout Howe (1729-1814), George Johnstone (1730-1787), Adm Richard Howe, Earl Howe (1726-1799), Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle (1748-1825), and William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland (1744-1814) – kneel before the personification of America, while she, enthroned atop barrels of American commodities, refuses to return her goods to English shores.