In the foreground is a portrait group of seven ministers, all wearing Geneva gowns, top-hats, and bands. They stand outside the window (right) of a house in 'Bank Street', inscribed 'N° 11'. and 'Cess Office', where a head looks out to say: 'Gentlemen you need not take the Trouble to come up stairs, as your weekly wage is stopt!! The radicals have laid an Interdict on it, and no one will now pay me annuity money! One, older than the others, says to the man next him: As I am the Principal amongst you let me tell you, that this is the effect of selling Sugar loaves at the Cross. I fear we may bring an old house about our ears!—1661 only gave a living to six of us.' (He is Dr. Baird, Principal of Edinburgh University, see BM Satires No. 8369.) One, apparently the minister of Greyfriars Church, shouts back to the office window: W'hat interdicted and no stipend this week! You must not play the poors house with us. They may starve but our maxim is to look to ourselves. We grey friars cannot live without our weekly support.' A third, with the sardonically smiling profile of Grey, says: 'I swear by the Apocrypha that I'll take no composition! Nothing but the needful in full will please me!' A fourth, his back to the office, says: 'I think we resemble a parcel of very salt herrings.' Behind (left) is a queue of nine undifferentiated ministers, wailing for their quota. Beside them and larger in scale is Dr. Thomson on a white horse which has a human head wearing a cocked hat. He says: 'Well done Whitie! you can carry my brethern and me well; you do your duty to admiration. I shall be amongst the middle of the throng to Instruct them!' [an allusion to his 'Christian Instructor']. In the background a Minister hurries forward, saying, I'm not too late I hope. On the left are two laymen; one says to the other: 'It is a waefu sight to see Ministers going for their weekly wages like Journeymen.' 'Brownie' stands in the foreground (right), grinning broadly; he says: 'Ma Conscience! Wherever I go I am sure to meet my friends the Beau-Ideal [see BM Satires No. 15580] &amp; the Christian Instructor.' The background is a carefully drawn elevation of the Bank of Scotland.  1828
<br>Hand-coloured lithograph
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