A democrat - or - reason & philosophy

Gillray, James, 1756-1815 · March 1, 1793

Fox, a ragged sansculotte with bloodstained hands and a dagger dripping blood thrust in his belt, sings "Ca ira!" He capers, right hand on his hip, left hand held up; expression and attitude suggest quasi-intoxication, a blast issues from his posteriors. On his forehead is a patch of sticking-plaster. He is unshaven and his body has a subhuman hairiness. He wears the ill-fitting wig of an artisan, with a tricolour cockade (BM). / This coarse satire upon Fox, and his supposed leaning towards the Sans-culottes of France, is said to have been one of the few caricatures against that statesman which really gave him offence. The attacks upon Fox's party, on the ground of their presumed revolutionary principles, were never carried to such an extent as at the moment when this print was published. "Ca ira" is the burthen of the most democratic song of the day (Wright/Evans).