Another example of Shelley’s devotion to liberty and equality and his radical denouncement of tyranny and power, The sonnet “England in 1819” directly attacks the King and his successor, his son. The current King has gone mad in old age and is hated by the people of England. The problem is, under the current system the only thing to replace him with, when he dies, is a continuing monarchy under the King’s son, who is not expected to improve matters for England. Shelley accuses the monarchy of having no true human emotion, relying on the labor of the country’s poor to provide for the ruling class, at least until the common people are killed for no reason by their own army, which they live to provide for and serve.
The speaker thus has no faith left in the leading institutions in England; he condemns the army, the law, religion, and the senate. The speaker goes into detail over the troubles in England: the madness and blindness of the King; the muddied genetic line that includes the Prince; the ignorance of the nation’s “Rulers”; and the tired and hungry masses. Shelley also alludes again to the Peterloo Massacre (see “The Mask of Anarchy”), calling the people “stabbed in an untilled field.”