4 pages : orn. ; 32 cm

1 online resource.

Caption title; between title and dateline is a wood-engraved cock above the motto Dum spiro cano [While I breathe, I crow]. -- Imprint (no place, date) at foot of column 3, p.4.

An elaborate spoof in the form of a newspaper (sole issue) with two adverts (one for a fictitious book quoting Quarterly Review and Edinburgh Review) but chiefly a report of a "hen petition" being read in Commons, with the debate & vote. The petition is introduced by "Sir Bantam Cocks," who believes that a newly invented "hatching machine" will have disastrous consequences for the hens; he also believes that "the same ill-directed ingenuity" which created that machine may contrive an "improved method of laying eggs" without any hens' involvement; the usual economists' argument for the capitalist--when one branch of trade fails, simply reinvest in another--is insufficient; he fears that many similar "improvements" carry "desolation, pestilence, and death" with them. The petition quotes the Board of Trade (W. Vesey-Fitzgerald?) as stating that 16 million eggs were imported in the last year and cites an instance of thus-unemployed hens, "allured by ... R. Wilmot Horton's arguments in favor of emigration, " who tried to go by "cock-boat" to the "dominions of the King of Bantam" but foundered in the "foul weather." Members speaking, for & against, include Viscount Duckleborough, Sir Egbert Hatchit, Sir Solon Goose, etc.

Reproduction of original from Goldsmiths' Library, University of London.

Goldsmiths'-Kress no. Unknown.

Electronic reproduction. Farmington Hills, Mich. : Thomson Gale, 2005. Available via the World Wide Web. Access limited to licensing agreements.

The Making of the Modern World, Part I : The Goldsmiths'-Kress Collection, 1450-1850

Great Britain. Parliament > Humor.

Chickens > Humor.

Egg trade > Great Britain > Humor.

Great Britain > Commerce > Humor.

Great Britain > Politics and government > 1820-1830 > Humor.

Satires - England - 19th century.

Newspapers - 19th century.

Wood engravings - 19th century - England.