Sir Francis Burdett holds up a bonnet rouge shaped like a fool's cap as he and Samuel Whitbread encourages those who are making a bonfire of statutes on the cobbles of Palace Yard; Westminster Hall is stoned and demolished by the mob beyond. Etching by J. Gillray.

On the public meeting held in Westminster Hall on 29 March 1809 which discussed the conduct of the Duke of York, who was accused of permitting his mistress to sell army commissions. Burdett and Samuel Whitbread (who led the radical Whigs and, as a brewer, is dressed as a drayman holding a beer barrel on his shoulder) were the only two members of Parliament present and urged immediate Parliamentary reform. Among the statutes being thrown on the bonfire are the 'Bill of rights', the 'Magna charta', 'Habeas corpus' etc. On the extreme left is Colonel Wardle, the chief accuser of the Duke of York. On the right, the Whig leader William Wyndham Grenville, Baron Grenville, displays his "disproportionately prominent ... posterior" (Oxford dictionary of national biography)