Midas Transmuting All into Paper

James Gillray (British, 1756–1815), 1797, Hand-colored etching and engraving

In 1797, in the midst of an expensive war with France, England decreed that its national bank would no longer redeem banknotes for gold and silver. The Bank Restriction Act authorized a mass increase in paper currency to replace the withdrawn coinage. Two weeks after its passage, the period’s leading caricaturist, James Gillray, vilified the policy in this satire. It features an ass-eared, gold-engorged William Pitt, Prime Minister of Great Britain, squatting over the commode-like rotunda of the Bank of England, evacuating paper from both orifices. Adapting the Midas legend, the print, like the caricatures of 1720, lampoons the idea of paper credit as an unhinged alchemical fantasy.