The Weekly Freeman began publishing in 1871. At some point in the 1870s it began including a large colour political cartoon, printed on card by chromolithography, as a supplement, an innovation that was soon copied by other papers. The paper was Parnellite, and the satire of its cartoons was more propagandist than humorous. As well as caricatures of prominent political figures, they regularly featured , the female personification of Ireland, a dark-haired, classically-dressed, late Victorian beauty, and , the male personification of the Irish people as a handsome tenant farmer with small, bushy sideburns, amiable but often discreetly armed with a shillelagh.