The Scotch Neptune displaying a signal to Friends in the North!! (caricature)

On the left in this hand-coloured etching, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Henry Dundas, leans from a window labelled ‘Admiralty’, waving a trident holding three miniature crowns. He shouts to a crowd in Highland dress, running towards him open armed, ‘Come along my brae lads – here is muckle picking for you all. – come along Donald – Sandy – Mac – Sammie – here’s pretty little croons for ye aw! – wha wants me; my bonny Bairns.’ The crowd descends from a distant hill, in the top right, upon which is a castle labelled ‘Edin buro’, flying a red flag with a St George’s cross canton. In the foreground, at the bottom right, a grey rectangle is inscribed ‘Portable Oven for Batches of Peers!!’.

Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, was born in Edinburgh. Compared in this print to Neptune, the trident-wielding Roman God of the Sea, Dundas held several roles in naval administration. A key ally of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, he served as Treasurer of the Navy from 1782 to 1783, and again from 1783 to 1800, and became First Lord of the Admiralty on 15 May 1804. He was also considered a dominant power in Scotland during a time of royal absence in the country, earning him nicknames such as ‘The Uncrowned King of Scotland’ and ‘King Harry the Ninth’. Between 1802 and 1805, Dundas was investigated for embezzlement of public money. Although he was ultimately acquired, the scandal contributed to the end of his career.

Here, Dundas is luring young talent away from Edinburgh to join Parliament. This satirises Dundas's apparent hypocrisy in advocating for the so-called Scottish Enlightenment while at the same time supporting the government, which had a bias towards England and pulled resources from Scotland.

The phrase ‘Wha wants me’, used in Dundas’s speech here, was synonymous with Scottish street sellers who sold the use of portable, public toilets in busy cities like Edinburgh and London. An earlier caricature by James Gillray from 1792(surviving impression in the National Portrait Gallery, NPG D13012) depicts Dundas as a ‘Wha wants me man’, providing relief and protection for Pitt.