| Nestor Burma |
12 mei 2009 18:13 |
Nog iets toepasselijk van een Crowley-adept:
The causes of the French Revolution and the wars it gave birth may, in general, be pictured as the melting down of the Columbian epoch in a crucible of gold, out of which was cast a new way of life, which I will call the Napoleonic. Peculation was rife; justice was at a discount except for those who could buy it; imprisonment was often without trial; punishments were still barbarous; ... personal freedom was denied by the system of "mainmorte;" free speech was prohibited. ... The reality was that all but the parasites yearned for something new, and the fact that in America revolt had given to such men what they thought they desired.
Long before revolution turned to thunder and lightning the storm had been tamped in London. There lay stored away the greater part of the world’s stock of gold and silver, and, as after the Seven Years’ War nearly every country in Europe had to borrow from London, the basis of European economic structure was changed from wealth to debt. Among these nations France became the more heavily involved, as she was compelled to borrow large sums in order to pay for British colonial imports and her own share of the cost of the war of the American Rebellion. Soon she was reduced to borrow in order to pay interest on former loans; so it came about that, at the time when Bentham was writing his Defence of Usury, Necker, Louis XVI’s banker and treasurer, was gambling with a nullity. Between 1783 and 1787, by borrowing, he created an additional debt of no less than 425 million livres, which enserfed the King to the usurers, whose weapons were the newspapers, which they either bought or were subsidising. By them they focused public opinion on their aim, which was the creation of a constitutional monarchy on the English pattern, according to which the King was subservient to the Money Power. "The English system, as Necker had perceived," writes Mr. R. McNair Wilson in his The Mind of Napoleon, "was a dictatorship of finance cleverly disguised as a ‘crowned republic.’
This oligarchy ... controlled money; it controlled the Press; it controlled the funds of both the great political parties. Thus it was in command of the whole patronage of the Crown on the one hand, and of the whole body of political patronage on the other." Such was the crucial factor which precipitated the French Revolution. It was not misery, for in 1789 social conditions were better than in 1759; instead, it was the check caused by the credit and debt system to increasing prosperity.
Necker attempted to float two large loans, and, failing to do so, the Bishop of Autun (Talleyrand), lover of his daughter, Madame de Staël, proposed that the Church lands should be confiscated. ... Necker ... obtained vast tracts of land as security for his promises to pay in gold and silver which did not exist. The people refusing the notes issued, a run on the banks followed, whereupon Necker fled the country. ... In order to destroy the "assignats," he set about to foment a foreign war against Austria. In this he was backed by the City of London, in which it was realised that, should land-money right France, it had every chance of righting other agricultural countries, and that this would lead to the dethronement of gold. "If war broke out ... France would need gold-loans once more."1
1 J.F.C Fuller, Decisive Battles, p.
http://www.napoleongames.com/economic.html |
