Most of these were legal and were given, bought or exchanged (I'm *not* saying there wasn't pressure to give them or sell them for cheap, but teeeeechnically we didn't steal them... Still giving some back tho cos this technicality is weak af)
Also one could say it's our modern views on an old matter, and it is but only partly:
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred !
Lord Byron, Childe Harold, 1811
Also one could say it's our modern views on an old matter, and it is but only partly:
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred !
Lord Byron, Childe Harold, 1811