An ape wearing motley clothing of different professions (bishop, soldier, businessman etc.), but incompetent in all of them; representing failings of politicians of the generation after William Pitt the Elder (?). Engraving by T. Rowlandson after E.S. Barrett, 1807.

The ape apparently represents politicians who 'ape' the various professions (here by wearing their costumes), but does not have the appropriate skills. It accidentally tips two books (the Magna Charter and Coronation Oath) down from a shelf above with its crozier and shoots at them accidentally with a standing musket, representing the damage caused to sound principles by professional pluralism. With its left hand it writes with the wrong end of the pen in an open book headed 'finance'. Papers on the floor, labelled 'negotiation' and sinecures', are on fire. It smokes a pipe from which thick clouds of smoke rise obscuring a portrait painting of the recently deceased politician William Pitt the Elder. The lettering calls the ape a monster because it combines incongruous features like a creature with birth deformities