No More Learning

They met, they debated, they went to the theatre in state, and
finally decided to send monitory despatches to Spain, and to leave to
France a free hand to look after her own interests, and to go to war or
not, as she was pleased to determine. There was one dissentient, the
Duke of Wellington, who refused to sign the _proces verbaux_. His
Britannic Majesty had been advised to let the Spaniards alone, and not
to meddle with their internal affairs. The final outcome of the
Congress, the French invasion of Spain, could not be foreseen; and,
apparently, all that the Congress had accomplished was to refuse to
prohibit the exportation of negroes from Africa to America, and to
decline to receive the Greek deputies.

As the _Morning Chronicle_ (November 7, 1822) was pleased to put it,
"the Royal vultures have been deprived of their anticipated meal. "

From the Holy Alliance and its antagonist, "the revolutionary stork,"
Byron turns to the landed and agricultural "interest" of Great Britain.
With the cessation of war and the resumption of cash payments in 1819,
prices had fallen some 50 per cent. , and rents were beginning to fall.
Wheat, which in 1818 had fetched 80s. a quarter, in December, 1822, was
quoted at 39s. 11d. ; consols were at 80. Poor rates had risen from
? 2,000,000 in 1792 to ? 8,000,000 in 1822.
How was the distress which
these changes involved to be met? By retrenchment and reform, by the
repeal of taxes, the reduction of salaries, by the landlords and
farmers, who had profited by war prices, submitting to the inevitable
reaction; or by sliding scales, by a return to an inflated currency,
perhaps by a repudiation of a portion of the funded debt?

The point of Byron's diatribe is that Squire Dives had enjoyed good
things during the war, and, now that the war was over, he had no
intention to let Lazarus have his turn; that, whoever suffered, it
should not be Dives; that patriotism had brought grist to his mill; and
that he proposed to suck no small advantage out of peace.

"Year after year they voted cent. per cent. ,
Blood, sweat, and tear-wrung millions--why? for rent?
They roared, they dined, they drank, they swore they meant
To die for England--why then live? --for rent! "

It is easier to divine the "Sources" and the inspiration of _The Age of
Bronze_ than to place the reader _au courant_ with the literary and
political _causerie_ of the day. Byron wrote with O'Meara's book at his
elbow, and with batches of _Galignani's Messenger_, the _Morning
Chronicle_, and _Cobbett's Weekly Register_ within his reach. He was
under the impression that his lines would appear as an anonymous
contribution to _The Liberal_, and, in any case, he felt that he could
speak out, unchecked and uncriticized by friend or publisher. He was, so
to speak, unmuzzled.

With regard to the style and quality of his new satire, Byron was under
an amiable delusion. His couplets, he imagined, were in his "early
_English Bards_ style," but "more stilted. " He did not realize that,
whatever the intervening years had taken away, they had "left behind"
experience and passion, and that he had learned to think and to feel.