Search night - or - state watchmen mistaking honest men for conspirators

The interior of a bare, poverty-stricken room with a raftered roof. Pitt and Dundas, as watchmen, batter down the upper timbers of a door (right) which has been strongly bolted, locked, and barricaded. Both have long staves, Pitt holds up a lantern. The occupants hide or flee, except Lord Moira, who stands stiffly in profile to the right on the extreme left, his crisped fingers outspread deprecatingly, disassociating himself from his companions. He wears regimentals with a cocked hat. A heavy but ragged cloth covers a rectangular table in the middle of the room, on which are ink-pot and papers. A dark-lantern stands on open pages. An office stool has been overturned. Prone under the table, their heads and shoulders draped by the cloth, are (left to right): Horne Tooke, Nicholls, and Tierney. Fox and Sheridan escape up a ladder to a trap-door in the roof. The latter still has one foot on the floor. Between ladder and wall (left) is an iron-bound chest filled with daggers. More daggers are heaped on the floor and beneath them are two papers: 'The Press' (the organ of the United Irishmen, started by O'Connor) and 'Bloody News from Ireland.' This lies across a paper signed 'Munchausen.' The Duke of Norfolk is timorously waiting his turn to escape by the wide chimney, up which Bedford is disappearing. The latter is identified by a paper hanging from his pocket. A large fire burns in the grate, on the bar of which Bedford puts his foot. Across the chimney is scrawled 'Vive l'Egalite' on either side of a bonnet-rouge. Above it are prints, bust-portraits of Buonapart and Robespierre. On the right is a casement window showing a night sky and the turrets of the White Tower. Below it is hung a broadside headed by a guillotine. In the corner of the room (right) is a pile of bonnets-rouges. In the foreground rats scamper towards a large hole in the ramshackle floor. Beside them are papers. / Some arrests had been made in England in the beginning of March, 1798, of persons implicated in the troubles that were disturbing Ireland, and were the object of severe animadversions by some of the opposition papers. The subject is here made the ground for a satire on the Whigs. Pitt and Dundas, the two State Watchmen, are breaking in upon the conspirators. The two leaders, Fox and Sheridan, make their escape by the cock-loft, while the Dukes of Bedford and Norfolk take to the chimney. Three of the party have sought a refuge under the table. Lord Moira alone stands his ground (Wright/Evans).
Courtesy of Boston Public Library