Byron’s Social Doctrine 23
Byron did not recognize the fact that the Industrial Revo-
lution lay at the bottom of the trouble, and his speech in
opposition to the bill did not offer any suggestion of the con-
ciliation for which he cried. In his advocacy of tolerance,
however, he exhibited more wisdom than the majority of his
colleagues, for on March 5,1812, they passed the bill against
which he spoke.
Byron’s protest was not confined to the speech in Parlia-
ment. “An Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill” appeared
in the Morning Chronicle on March 2. As poetry it is of
minor importance, but it is a fitting follow-up of the speech.
In it he attacks Lord Liverpool, who introduced the bill, and
others who supported it. He ends the poem by saying:
(And who will refuse to partake in the hope?)
That the frames of the fools may be first to be broken,
Who, when asked for a remedy, sent down a rope.9
He took up the cry again in 1816 when he wrote “Song
for the Luddites.” The theme is a continuation of his plea
for freedom from the oppression imposed upon the weavers
by the Frame-Bill, and he advocates revolution as a means
of accomplishing this end.
A second speech followed close upon the heels of the first,
and it was also on behalf of an oppressed class. This one was
occasioned by the question of Catholic emancipation, which
had been a sore spot in Parliamentary proceedings for a
number of years. First Pitt, then Canning had pushed the
question doggedly through Parliament. Byron’s speech was
made on April 21, 1812, during debate on the Earl of
Donoughmore’s motion for a committee on Roman Cathohc
claims. The motion for the committee was occasioned by an
address to the Prince Regent and petitions presented to both
houses of Parliament on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland.