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# British leaflet of the 1790s contrasts British Liberty with the French Medusa
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/v-anglii-1790-kh-poiavliaiutsia-kampanii-protiv-veianii-iz-frantsii-pugaiushchikh-fonom-krovavykh-rasprav-i-sverzheniia-monarkhii-2/
- Published: 2025-08-11T09:11:56.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:39:18.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Archive, Art, Observations, Society

In the 1790s, campaigns against influences from France appear in England, frightened by the backdrop of bloody reprisals and the overthrow of the monarchy. A propaganda broadsheet compares two allegories of Liberty: Britannia with the scales of justice, Magna Carta under the protection of the imperial lion, and a staff topped with a Phrygian cap, naively borrowed from the French, set against the hideous French Medusa, accompanied by destruction and death. I do not know whether it is worth recalling Tocqueville's idea that liberty and equality cannot exist at the same time. Or, say, reflecting on the overwhelming majority of Britons, who in the 1790s lived in extreme poverty, while the handsome posters spoke of industry, national prosperity and happiness. And what, in the end, in historical perspective, is better: religion, morality and lawfulness, or atheism and anarchy?