Artist Unknown
Who’ll Have the Specie?
Publisher: H. R. Robinson
Lithograph
1837 |
President Martin Van Buren, depicted as a monkey, thumbs his nose and points his tail at British Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, who is shown as a dog chained to a doghouse. The English, suffering from their own economic depression, called in their loans to the United States, which had to be repaid in specie or hard currency (gold or silver). The cartoon implies that the U.S. had no intention of actually paying the debts. In the background, Louis Philippe, King of France, drawn as a rooster stands on a bag labeled “Indemnity,” referring to the refusal of France to pay the U.S. the indemnity, or reparations, set by the Treaty of 1831. |
![Drawn On Stone [Political Prints from the 1830's and 1840's]](../top2.gif)
