Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry

Plate 221, Statesmen No. 137, carries the sardonic caption "The Governing Classes" — plural, pointedly so. Prosper d'Epinay renders the Duke in profile: an elderly, stoop-shouldered figure in a brown frock coat, wild grey hair defying gravity, absorbed in The Daily Telegraph while tucking hat and cane under one arm. A ducal coronet floats upper-right, identifying rank without flattery. The joke is class itself: here is one of Britain's wealthiest landowners — Buccleuch held more acres than almost any peer — governing by hereditary right while reading the popular press. The caricature exaggerates age and dishevelment to suggest a ruling order past its intellectual prime, coasting on coronets.