A satirical cartoon attacking the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister, for the passage in April 1829 of the Roman Catholic Relief Act. The Act repealed a number of politically restrictive laws in Ireland and granted Catholics the right to sit in the House of Commons.
A radiant George IV is shown as the sun. He is obscured by a scowling Wellington, causing a shadow to fall across England while Ireland basks in the light. (The planet Uranus had been discovered in 1781 by an English astronomer and named "the Georgium Sidus," the Georgian Planet, after George III.) "A. Sharpshooter" was the pseudonym of a well-known satirical artist of the time, John Phillips.
