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. The fault of the poem is that too much matter is packed into too small a compass, and that, in parts, every line implies a minute acquaintance with contemporary events, and requires an explanatory note. But, even so, in The Age of Bronze Byron has wedded "a striking passage of history" to striking and imperishable verse.
The Age of Bronze was reviewed in the Scots Magazine, April, 1823, N.S., vol. xii. pp. 483-488; the Monthly Review, April, 1823, E.S., vol. 100, pp. 430-433; the Monthly Magazine, May, 1823, vol. 55, pp. 322-325; the Examiner, March 30, 1823; the Literary Chronicle, April 5, 1823; and the Literary Gazette, April 5, 1823.