Two hundred years hence, or, an aerial ship taking in passengers

Colour print 'McLean's Monthly Sheet of Caricature, No.38', by Robert Seymour, published by Thomas McLean, February 1833, featuring three scenes in heavy caricature.

Top left with the title 'Cultivating a Constituency' a puzzled fat farmer holds an axe with the word 'Reform' over a field of plants, each labelled 'A voter' with a small figure coming out of each plant. The farmer says to a bewigged judge behind him ‘Mayhap, my Lord, it be the best tool, as you say; but somehow the plants come up more scarce than ever’.

Top right with the title 'Emancipation' a white landowner with a large hat speaks to a seated black man. The landowner asks ‘Don’t you mean to go to work any more? I fear this beautiful land will become quite desolate’ and is answered ‘What for you talk of work to free Nigger? You no like the land, you hab better leab it’. More black figures appear sleeping behind.

At bottom, the title 'Two Hundred Years’ Hence; or an aerial ship taking passengers' shows two hot air balloons with passengers over a sea with small ships below. The larger balloon has ‘The XPKLZOPICLIODON’ and ‘For New York This Morning at 9 o’clock’ on its stern, and all white passengers calling to each other. They are all white skinned and wearing a variety of pointed dunces caps. They ask: ‘Ah! Mr Guelph, how do?’, ‘Very well, thank’ee Mr Capet, how are you?’, ‘By jove, there’s a fine commotion in the Dog star’, ‘See how the old fashioned folks creep along in the steam boats’. One figure wearing binoculars is calling to the smaller balloon attempting to hook onto the larger, 'Hook on man. D’y want to go under the vessel? Why what a poor terrestrial animal you are!’. The passengers in the smaller balloon are all black with one asking, ‘Do you think these English people sufficiently scientific?’.

This print forms part of the Penn-Gaskell Collection, acquired by Winifred Penn-Gaskell due to her interest in the history of ballooning and early aeronautica, and bequeathed to the Science Museum in 1950.