[334] ["Lord Londonderry proposed (April 29, 1822) that whenever wheat should be under 60 shillings a quarter, Government should be authorized to issue £1,000,000 in Exchequer bills to landed proprietors on the security of their crops; that importation of foreign corn should be permitted whenever the price of wheat should be at or above 70 shillings a quarter ... that a sliding-scale should be fixed, that for wheat being under 80s. a quarter at 12 shillings; above 80s. and below 85s., at 5 shillings; and above 85s., only one shilling."—Allison's History of Europe, 1815-1852, and 1854, ii. 506. The first clause was thrown out, but the rest of the bill passed May 13, 1822.]
[et] {571} For fear that riches——.—[MS. M.]
[eu] Will sell the harvest at a market price.—[MS. M.]
[ev] Are gone—their fields untilled.—[MS. M.]
[335] {572}[Peel's bill for the resumption of cash payments (Act 59 Geo. III. cap. 49) was passed June 14, 1819. The "landed interest" attributed the fall of prices and the consequent fall of rent to this measure, and hinted more or less plainly that the fund-holders should share the loss. They had lent their money when the currency was inflated, and should not now be paid off in gold.
"But you," exclaims Cobbett [Letter to Mr. Western (Weekly Register, November 23, 1822)], "what can induce you to stickle for the Pitt system [i.e. paper-money]? I will tell you what it is: you loved the high prices, and the domination that they gave you.... Besides this, you think that the boroughs can be preserved by a return to paper-money, and along with them the hare-and-pheasant law and justice. You loved the glorious times of paper-money, and you want them back again. You think that they could go on for ever.... The bill of 1819 was really a great relaxation of the Pitt system, and when you are crying out spoliation and confiscation, when you are bawling out so lustily about the robbery committed on you by the fund-holders and the placemen, and are praising the infernal Pitt system at the same time, ... you say they are receiving, the fund-vagabonds in particular, more than they ought." It is evident that Byron's verse is a reverberation of Cobbett's prose.]
[336] [Petitions were presented by the inhabitants of St. Andrew, Holborn; St. Botolf, Bishopsgate; and St. Gregory by St. Paul, to the Court of Common Council, against a tithe-charge of 2s, 9d. in the pound on their annual rents.—Morning Chronicle, November 1, 1822.]
[337] Lines 614-657 are not in the MS.
[338] {573}[The Symplegades, or "justling rocks," Ovid's instabiles Cyaneæ, were supposed to crush the ships which sailed between them.]
[339] [Alcina, the personification of carnal pleasure in the Orlando Furioso, is the counterpart of Homer's Circe. "She enjoyed her lovers for a time, and then changed them into trees, stones, fountains, or beasts, as her fancy dictated." (See Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, vi. 35, seq.)]