King George

British democracy went backwards in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. King George III was a lousy king but the British had to wait until he died of old age before they could move on. I suppose we should be grateful for the 22nd Amendment which limits an incompetent president to two terms. Things are not good in our country these days but here's a poem from the truly bad old days:


England in 1819


An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king—
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow;
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field—
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A Senate—Time's worst statutes unrepealed—
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.


—Percy Bysshe Shelley