Of every despotism in every nation,”[292]
he does not hesitate to condemn all absolute monarchs; moreover he displays a sincere faith in the ultimate success of popular government:
“I think I hear a little bird, who sings
The people by and by will be the stronger.”[293]
Such lines as these show a maturity and an earnestness that mark the evolution of Byron’s satiric spirit from the hasty petulance of English Bards to the humanitarian breadth of his thoughtful manhood. Like “Young Azim” in Moore’s Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, he is eager to march and command under the banner on which is emblazoned “Freedom to the World.”
It is characteristic of Byron’s later satire that he applied his theory of liberty to the current problems of British politics by assailing the obnoxious domestic measures instituted by the Tory ministry of Lord Liverpool, by condemning the English foreign policy of acquiescence in the legitimist doctrines of Metternich and the continental powers, and by attacking the characters of the ministers whom he considered responsible for England’s position at home and abroad. The England of the time of Don Juan was the country which Shelley so graphically pictured in his Sonnet: England in 1819:—
“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, ...
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, ...