Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/193

 high at twenty hundred pounds sterling a year, run up in a few years to be worth twenty thousand pounds sterling a year,—resume their old attitude of conquerors and look down on those with whom for a portion of the eighteenth century they had associated on a footing of equality, as a pack of despicable pedlars.

It was the isolation of England by the great war with Bonaparte, or Buonaparté as was the grammatical form of the name, that made England so much dependent on her own produce for food, and thus raised rent so prodigiously. When Bonaparte fell, the Corn Laws were resorted to as a substitute for Bonaparte in the raising of rents. Lord Byron in his satire, "The Age of Bronze," which appeared, I think, in 1823, that is somewhat more than two years after the death of George III. and the accession of George IV., has some lines on this subject of rent. I will quote a few of them:—

"For what were all these country patriots born?

To hunt and vote and raise the price of corn?

Why would you trouble Buonaparté's reign?

Why did you chain him on yon isle so lone?

The man was worth much more upon his throne.