Jules Méline, 'A Premier of France'

Signed by the French-born caricaturist Guth, this plate depicts Félix Jules Méline (1838–1925), then Prime Minister of France, standing at a lectern with a sheaf of papers in one hand and the other resting on an open portfolio. He wears a dark frock coat with a boutonnière and a small bow tie; his white goatee and receding hair read as markers of sober republican gravitas. The Mérite Agricole ribbon floats decoratively upper right—a pointed allusion to Méline's signature achievement, the protectionist Méline Tariff of 1892, which shielded French farmers from foreign grain competition. The caption, 'a Premier of France,' is notably flat, reflecting British ambivalence toward a conservative, clerically-tolerated premier navigating the Dreyfus Affair's early convulsions. The caricature exaggerates no ethnic feature; its politics lie in the agricultural emblem, quietly mocking a statesman who preferred wheat schedules to justice.