'Fighting Ulster' — William Grey Ellison-Macartney, M.P.

Spy (Leslie Ward) renders the Ulster Unionist MP William Grey Ellison-Macartney as a trim, self-possessed gentleman: top hat, grey waistcoat and trousers, black frock coat, a carnation buttonhole, and hands tucked behind his back in a posture of confident ease. The caption 'Fighting Ulster' locates the political charge — Ellison-Macartney was a vocal opponent of Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill, defeated in the Lords that same year, and the title salutes Ulster Protestant resistance to Irish self-government. Ward's characteristic mild caricature flatters rather than savages: the reddish moustache and slightly enlarged head are the only distortions. No ethnic caricature is deployed; the figure reads as a respectable Westminster insider defending the Anglo-Irish Protestant establishment.