Byron’s Response to Polidori – 125

Dear Companions of the Villa,

Polidori, your mason raises towers and cages alike, and you are right to say the hand upon the chisel matters. Yet I wonder: if abundance is truly reached, will there be so much need for cages at all? Prisons are born of hunger, theft, and envy. When bread is scarce, men steal. When warmth is rare, men kill. But if every hearth is fed and every back is clothed, perhaps the stones that once walled prisoners might instead wall gardens.

I am no fool; I know cruelty lives in the human heart. But abundance could change the balance. The thief would find himself mocked: “Why steal bread, when loaves are as common as stones?” The despot might find his threats dull: “Why hoard power, when none need bow for food or shelter?”

It may be naïve to think plenty cures all ills. Yet it seems to me the fewer our desperations, the fewer our crimes. If the alphabet of atoms can spell abundance, then perhaps it may also erase the grim lexicon of gallows and chains.

So let us not fear abundance as a danger, but see it as a chance to render certain dangers obsolete. A world of plenty will still have folly and passion — but perhaps fewer cages, and more rooms for song.

— Byron