“The Modern St. Patrick. Or how the Viceroy Drove Out All the Vermin

The Modern St. Patrick. Or how the Viceroy Drove Out All the Vermin

Dalziel Brothers, engravers

Fun

(3 March 1866): 245

Courtesy of the HathiTrust Digital Library and Princeton University.

This cartoon in a periodical that was often sympathetic to Ireland makes an unfortunate, insulting analogy between St. Patrick ridding Ireland of its snakes and the representative of the English government imprisoning Irish activists, including members of Parliament, without charges — the result of the disastrous Coercion Act, which instantly swept away all the good feeling created by the Land Acts. In St. Patrick struggling with the reptiles (1883) the cartoonist presents Gladstone fighting for Irish Home Rule trapped by the Tory python.

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