Triptolemus a chariot drawn by serpents, and
bade him scatter wheat throughout the world. (See Ovid, _Met._, lib. v.
lines 642-661.)]
[er] _The mighty monosyllable high_ Rent!--[MS.]
[es] ----_upon the audit day_.--[MS. M.]
[334] ["Lord Londonderry proposed (April 29, 1822) that whenever wheat
should be under 60 shillings a quarter, Government should be authorized
to issue L1,000,000 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
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