There was no age of reason

There was no age of reason

Or period of enlightenment

Political discourse

Open debate or philosophical jousting

Beyond a few privileged

Well-fed propagandists

Spouting equality from the safety

Of wood panelled salons.

The hoi polloi drank gin

In rotten boroughs

As dirty water mixed with sewage

Thinned out the masses

The scaffold

On Tyburn hill took many

Who stole no more than a crust

Old boats carried others

Until the Empire struck back.

Prisoners and slaves

Were granted freedom under god

The slavers were scuttled

Into a period of economic migration

Until trafficking increased

Petty debates raged on

As tabloid populism was born

A very anti-social construct.

Nobody knows anything more

Than they ever did

So many arguments

Tainted with a distaste

For intellectualism

Which is just as it always was

Ask Rousseau and Tom Paine

Nobody likes a smartass

Experts take the biscuit

Let them eat cake.