A satirical group portrayal of seven leaders of the opposition, through the lens of the emerging science of physiognomy, made popular in the later 18th century by the Swiss writer and philosopher, Johann Kaspar Lavater. Gillray appends his quote, “If you would know Mens Hearts, look in their Faces”, to the title, although he had made a positive analysis of Charles James Fox’s physiognomy in 1788, in contrast to his appearance as the first portrait bust in this group. Each subject is depicted beside a near-identical, though far less flattering, double, each numbered in roman numerals to correspond with the key below the title. I is Fox, The Patron of Liberty, his double (‘Doublûre’) The Arch-Fiend, a satanic figure with a serpent round his neck,with flames behind; II is Richard Brinsley Sheridan, A Friend of his Country, his double Judas selling his Master; III is the Duke of Norfolk, Character of High Birth, his double Silenus debauching, swilling wine with a dishevelled crown of vine leaves; IV is George Tierney, A Finish’d Patriot, his double The lowest Spirit of Hell; V is Sir Francis Burdett, Arbiter Elegantiarum, his double Sixteen-string Jack, a notorious highwayman; VI is Lord Derby, Strong Sense, his double A Baboon, wearing the French revolutionary Bonnet-rouge; VII is the Duke of Bedford, A Pillar of the State, his double A Newmarket Jockey, the heads wearing a top hat and a jockey’s cap, respectively.

This plate was issued folded within The Anti-Jacobin Review of November 1798, the ultra-Tory political magazine that vocalised the backlash against the ideals of the French Revolution, which had been launched just three months earlier, and ran until 1821.