In Protesilaus: or, The Character of an Evil Minister, a 1730 propaganda tract, author Charles Forman describes in extended and visceral terms the dangers that a bad prime minster and disinterested king pose to a kingdom: ‘What causes Murmurs, Revolts and Rebellions in a State? It is the Ambition, the Insolence, the Rapaciousness of a Minister, and the mercenary Grandees who prostitute their Honour, become the Tools of his Designs, when the Prince gives too great a Liberty to their Rapine and Oppression’. Dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole, the tract purports to differentiate between good political leadership and bad, between the altruism of the effective prime minister and the harmful rapaciousness of the selfish politician. Forman praises Walpole for his ‘personal Courage’, ‘Humility’ and ‘Justice and Impartiality’, along with his ‘Benevolence to Mankind in general’. Of course, such fulsome praise is employed satirically, as the tract actually seeks to condemn Walpole's selfish plunder of the English nation. Walpole has, the author warns, ‘prostituted’ his honour and committed ‘Rapine’ against the English people, sexual terminology applied to an economic form of crime.

Integral to Forman's condemnation of Walpole's leadership is the use of sexually violent imagery to describe the minister's deleterious effects on the nation.