William James Linton:

38) The Jubilee of Trade. A Vision of the Nineteenth Century after Christ.

London 1843 / 1850

In a delirium of hellish visions, the poem pictures the devastations caused by a blood-thirsty monster named the “Spirit of Trade.” Linton here presents himself as a people’s poet in the manner of Shelley. In his prophetic rage against the insanities of commerce and the tyranny of unfeeling Utilitarianism and free trade he anticipates Ezra Pound’s Usura litanies. In 1898, Burton J. Hendrick called i “a palpable imitation of Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy. He had not yet outgrown Shelley’s influence when he published, in 1848, The Dirge of the Nations, and To the Future. The tone of these poems was still didactic, but was pitched upon a somewhat higher key.”