PHRYGIA, FINANCE, AND FRONT MAN

The Assyrian conquests must have released a very flood of bullion on to the markets of the Middle East.

 

Steeply rising prices that would have followed must have made it more profitable for bankers and money lenders and manufacturers from this most ancient area to look further afield for lands where money as denoted by treasure was not so plentiful, and therefore wherein such treasure might serve them best.

 

The gold, silver, and electrum bullion with which, after 671 B.C. and the Assyrian thrust into Egypt during the second phase of Assyrian conquest, their store houses and strong rooms were overflowing, could be put to better use than lying inactive in these same store houses or strong rooms, at Nineveh, Babylon, Lagash, or Ur or wherever they were situated.

The privately issued electrum staters of Lydia of the seventh and sixth century B.C. denoted a highly significant possibility... Lydia was the source of something Assyria badly needed. The first thing such military organization such as existed in Assyria would need, would be financial organization, and secondly, stemming from its financial organization, organization above all towards the purpose of the purchase of the best of arms...

 

Phrygia was famous throughout the ancient world for its arms.⁽¹⁾ Lydia bordered on and indeed may very well have been part of Phrygia in earlier times. Hence the secret of the electrum staters. Assyria needed Phrygian arms and at the same time had to accept such financial terns as the suppliers of such arms decreed, and it may safely be assured that such terms stipulated payment was to be made in gold, silver, or electrum.

The extraordinary treasure of such as Sadyattes, latter dispossessed and executed by Croesus, cannot be explained any other way. It had to derive from the plunder gathered up by Assyria from all its conquests, as much as from the river washings of Lydia.

 

The evidence of the gold artifacts, of the ancient civilizations of Anatolia of thousands of years previous to this time, such as Hacilar, Catal Huyuk, Dorak,⁽²⁾ would indicate that the Anatolian rivers had been well washed for gold many ages before ⁽³⁾...

 

Although according to the Guide to the principal coins of the Greeks published by the British Museum, pages 12-13, electrum for the Lydian coinages came from the Pactolus river, the question still stands:

"what happened to the enormous gold, silver, and electrum plunder, of Assyria; that had been taken from Aram, Israel, Arabia, and above all from Egypt?"

The great temple cities such as Karnak must have literally gleamed with gold and silver monuments and finishing. According to Diodorus in 57 B.C.:

"So that there was no city under the sun so adorned with so many and stately monuments of gold, silver, and ivory, and multitudes of colossi and obelisks, each cut out of an entire stone...

...The decorations of these buildings were as magnificent as their design. The walls and pylons were covered with paintings and sculpture, the gates and pillars were overlaid with gold and the floors with silver, which, to the Egyptians was a metal hardly less precious than gold itself." ⁽⁴⁾

The electrum obelisks of Hatsepsut ⁽⁵⁾ as removed by Ashurbanipal from before the Temple of Amon at Karnak in 661 B.C., contained, according to Breasted 2500 talents of electrum,⁽⁶⁾ and according to other writers as much as 2900 talent; not to speak of other more massive plunder stripped from temple and tomb.

 

The electrum from the obelisks alone, assuming the correctness of the percentages of gold, silver, and copper given on the cylinder reported by Desroches-Noblecourt to be in the Louvre, as being 75%, 22%, 3%, respectively,⁽⁷⁾ would value at $186,648,000 (166,650 lbs. at approximately $70.00 to the fine ounce), having a buying power infinitely greater than in today.

 

Skillfully used as the basis of a pyramid of ledger credit page entry money, it would be sufficient to maintain the finances of great enterprise, if not of kingdoms. Lydia, peasant kingdom that had emerged from the ruins of Phrygia after the Cimmerian invasion,⁽⁸⁾ could very well have functioned in its institution in a similar manner to Switzerland during the last few hundred years; somewhat in the nature of a bullion broker’s or international banker’s refuge.⁽⁹⁾

 

Which might account, perhaps, for the ferocity of the destruction by Cyrus of the hapless Croesus, who was said to have been flayed alive; as example no doubt to other kings, and to remind them that while their power was national, there was another power which was international; above and beyond the power of petty kings...

Similarly, the other metals, copper, bronze, and iron, no longer deemed precious, and which therefore were often left on the battlefield, would fall into the hands of members of those semi-criminal castes such as Sadyattes, previously mentioned, who would control the camp followers that stripped the dead and thus garnered this scrap metal. These metals offered considerable profit by way of manufacturing counterfeits of the currencies of those states wherein base metal currencies were used...

Many Northern states and cities to which considerable industry was being transferred, used copper or iron fiduciary currencies in earlier times. Such was the iron currency of Clazomenae mentioned by Aristotle ⁽¹⁰⁾ and the iron spits of Pre-Pheidon Argos, examples of which were dedicated to the Goddess in the Temple of Hera at Argos at the commencement of silver coinage by Pheidon, and were actually exhumed from the place of their dedication by the archaeologists who explored that site.⁽¹¹⁾

 

Herein would have been fertile field for profit for those that dealt in money in Greece or elsewhere, for that matter.

Though the Greek himself obviously must have been the foundation of Greek industry, the Aramean or the Phoenician, bringing the ways of money and banking and who brought an alphabet and writing to Greece, became the cornerstone of that industry.

 

He also brought agencies from the great banking houses of Babylonia such as that firm mentioned by Professor Sayce in Babylonian Literature, which flourished from the reign of Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar, to the reign of Darius Hystaspes; approximately one hundred years; and of which evidence remains in the clay cheques and deeds found by some Arabs in a great earthen jar.⁽¹²⁾

 

Since the time of Professor Sayce, which is nearly a hundred years ago, much more evidence of the existence of powerful banking and merchant institutions has come to light; outstandingly those of the Egibi Sons, and the Murassu, who, according to Professor Humphrey Michell in his work, The Economics of Ancient Greece (P. 334), carried on very large and complicated business; even by modern standards.

Just as Babylonian business and banking houses maintained extensive branches in the Sumerian cities, such as at Lagash where their records were found to exceed the records of the king,⁽¹³⁾ so it may safely be assumed that they maintained branches within any state within the limits of the communications of the day, and where profit was to be made.

The sturdy intelligent people of Greece were a fertile field for the renewal of industry and trade after the disturbance that must have followed the rise in prices deriving from the augmentation of precious metal reserves resulting from the flow of Assyrian plunder on to the bullion markets, and later, with Babylonia once again supreme following the victories of Nabopolassar in 605 B.C., from the similar flow of Babylonian plunder.

 

At the same time Greece was a place of refuge from the war clouds drifting over all that Near East world, and the stench of slaughter that followed the warring hosts...

It would not be long before the skill of the Aramean at letters, money, counterfeit or otherwise, and in organization of industry, stirred the peasant kingdoms of Greece.

 

Industries rose under the guidance of these refugees similar to those of their homelands, to be later followed by a money economy as to the silver standards of Babylonia, and by the systematic spreading of money madness amongst the landed aristocracy of Greece, thus separating them from their peoples for whom they had been the hereditary guides.

 

For their peoples and their labors had now become but cyphers; desirable wealth assessed as according to the figures in the banker’s book.

The people who drifted into the cities as slave or freeman, and found employment in the organized manufacturies of these strangers who by now were calling themselves Greeks, and were by now bearing Greek names, not unnaturally gave their allegiance to that new hand that seemed to feed them.

 

Eagerly, just as in today, they drank at the fountain of hatred of their former masters, who through their sanction of the activities of these "New Greeks", and connivance with them in respect to the new money system they set up, betrayed both their people and themselves...

Among the first steps towards the total monetization of the wealth and labor of the Greek peoples to a precious metal standard controllable by the great banking houses of Babylonia, was the permitting of the striking of a silver coinage on the island of Aegina by Pheidon,⁽¹⁴⁾ "progressive" King of Argos in 680 B.C., similar to the private coinage that was issued in Lydia prior to Croesus.

 

"Progressive" King of Argos meant in this case a king ready to listen to the blandishments of money power, luring him into that trap which was the use of precious metal currency, over which he could have relatively little control; since silver as its base was to be obtained only at great expense by slave labour at localities too often far distant, and, relative to localities yielding iron or copper, few and far between.

 

True, the silver used by the moneyers of Aegina probably came from Laureion, in sight across the sea.

 

But even though the source of supply was so close at hand, a coinage of which so small a unit represented so much value, placed the economy, through the practices of banking, in the hands of the international bullion controllers.

That the bankers, known as trapezitae, conducted almost the same business as bankers today is clearly indicated by the article in Seffert’s Classical Dictionary, even if, as the word trapezitae indicates, they but sat at a bench in the market place, instead of sitting in gilded halls surmounted by sixty story buildings, as indeed they do today.

 

Within the limits of clay tablet and stylus, the same confidence game was operated, though probably there were few who understood it as being such;... yesterday it was a conspiracy against the men of a city, or a relatively small state; today a conspiracy against the whole world.

 

Those that have their hands on the throttle of this all embracing evil do not however bear the faintest resemblance to whole hearted demons in hell, or gods who in their mountain halls contemptuously plan the total eradication of man who may be their complete failure....

 

They are but pudgy and sly little men as much overwhelmed by the monster they have raised, as are the foolish nations that permitted them so to do.

Of Ancient Greek banking Seffert says:

"...Bankers were called by the Greeks trapezitae because they sat at tables in the market places, the centre of all business transactions. They acted as money changers exchanging for a commission heavy money or gold into smaller coin, and the moneys of different systems with each other. In commercial cities they would do a considerable trade in this way, the different standards and the uncertainty of the stamping of the coins in Greece creating a great demand for their assistance.

 

They also acted as money lenders both on a small and a large scale. Finally they received money on deposit. People placed their money with them for safe custody, partly to facilitate the management of it. The depositors, according to their convenience, either drew out sums of money themselves, or commissioned their banker to make payment to a third person. In this line the business of the banks was considerable. If a citizen had a large sum of money circulating in business, he probably preferred to put it in a bank and to hand over to the banker the business of making his payments.

 

Strangers too found that the banks offered them such facilities that they were glad to make considerable use of them.⁽¹⁵⁾ The bankers kept strict account of all monies in their charge. If a person were making a payment to another who was a depositor at the same bank, the banker would simply transfer the requisite sum from one account to another. The bankers were generally well known from the public character of their occupation, and they naturally gained great experience in business. Consequently their advice and assistance were often asked for in the ordinary affairs of life.

 

They would be called in to attest the conclusion of contracts, and would take charge of sums of money, the title to which was disputed, and of important documents. Business of this kind was generally in the hands of resident aliens." ⁽¹⁶⁾

The above quotation from the great German scholar, Oskar Seffert, leaves those of us who understand the origins and meaning of today’s banking, little doubt, as previously pointed out, that within the limits of clay tablet and stylus, every fraudulent practice known to banking would have been practiced.

 

Also the commonly accepted idea that instruments used in foreign trade, such as Letters of Credit, Bills of Exchange, etc. were a discovery of the 12th Century A.D., is further clearly proved erroneous by the sentence:

"Strangers too found that the banks offered them such facilities that they were glad to make considerable use of them." ⁽¹⁷⁾

Therefore behind the monetary reforms of King Pheidon of Argos we must see not the wonder of what so many so-called scholars would call the arrival of the "invention" of coinage in Greece, but the comings and goings of strange aliens with letters from mysterious "Important" men who dwelt in Tyre, or Sidon, or Sardis, or who dwelt in Babylonia itself; everything to be in the name of "progress", everything to be joy and light!...

 

The only thing our poor peasant king had to ask himself was...

"Joy and light for whom... Us or these panders, pornographers, and luxury pedlars who now flock to our shores?"

Very soon, no doubt, the answer became apparent. Behind the Aramaic speaking banker came the slave trader, and it was not long before the poor people found that the king’s law was no longer for them, and was but a measure behind which these glib and double talking "Bankers" operated...

"We must protect the people’s savings!"...no doubt was their cry, yesterday, as in today.

Such silver coinage as was produced at Aegina or Argos would have been no more than a few seen symbols, the apex of an inverted pyramid of unseen or abstract symbols of which only the money master really understood the meaning and purpose, and only he knew how to manipulate.

 

Through manipulation of these "Credits" in relation to the silver that people now thought was their money, King Pheidon himself could have been tricked into believing himself a slave because he could not repay his so-called "debt".

 

However the banker needed the king as such, for a while yet no doubt.

In the meantime peasantry and lesser nobility were drawn into this trap of irredeemable debt, and, as the king’s law had to be upheld, they and their families would be sold into that cruel slave system that was growing up all over the Mediterranean world and through which, money economy, now grown into a very monster, could find docile labor for the dreary grind of the new methods of semi-mass production in manufacture, such as it had brought into being, and against which the reforms of Solon as described in the previous chapter, were directed.

History should not be misled by the Greek names of those significant figures and families concerned with money and money power at that time, whether in Lydia or in Greece... Oskar Seffert states quite clearly that the bankers or trapezitae were resident aliens.⁽¹⁸⁾ Controlling the undercurrents of city life as undoubtedly they would have so done, in those days it would have been no more difficult than it is in these days to secure the services of a front man to promote their interests, and secure them citizenship if necessary.

 

Just as aliens who seek trade and power amongst whatever people they maybe, so often change their names to suit the circumstances while retaining allegiance to that group into which they were born, so it was in that day, nearly three thousand years ago. In the early days of the Greek cities, citizenship was easy to obtain and persons with pretence at power, influence and money, in a society where worship of money had replaced worship of the gods, in truth, would have no great difficulty in that direction.

Out of the weakening of what was left of the true power of kingly rule at Athens, such as descended from Mycenaean Greece, and consequent growth of "Aristocratic" democracy, doubtless deriving from concession to international money power for its assistance against the Dorian previous to 1100 B.C., and before whom it appears the city of Athens never fell, came the replacement of the title Wanax indicating god-king reigning in earthly splendor, for that of Archon-Basileus of lesser degree.⁽¹⁹⁾

 

Out of the further weakening of such aristocracy of the Greeks as later existed, whether Achaean, Ionian, or Dorian, and the soul destruction sown amongst them as consequence of their betrayal into slavery and abuse of their followers who had so trusted them and looked to them for guidance, derived those conditions out of which the so-called tyrant rose to power.

 

Out of the involvement of the natural leaders of the people ⁽²⁰⁾ with things ignoble and inimical to their own kind, such as trade and "Money-making", and with strange luxuries and vices, rose those men, often traitors to their own class, who fronted for the conspiratorial money power of the age...

 

Such men steered the restless aspirations of the wage slaves of the cities; those dispossessed masses so easily stirred to active resentment against their former leaders deriving from the ancient nobility; and who, of course, had no more understanding than themselves of that force by which they were both being manipulated...



References

1. "But I perhaps, owing to the number of advocates may be classed in the common body; the battle of Cannae has made you a sufficiently respectable accuser. We have seen many men slain, not at Trasimene but at Servilius. Who was not wounded there with Phrygian steel ?..." Cicero: Orationes, "Pro S. Roscius" (Vol. I, P. 65; C.D. Yonge; London, 1883.).

2. Kenneth Pearson: The Dorak Affair, London, 1967.

3. Strabo, XIII, iv, 5. (Del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, P. 51.)

4. Christopher Dawson: Age of the Gods, P. 295.

5. James H. Breasted: History of Egypt, P. 281.

6. Ibid. P. 559.

7. Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt: Tutankhamen, P. 33. New York, 1963.

8. Encyclopaedia of World History, P. 37, Boston, 1948.

9. The fact that after the destruction of Croesus by Cyrus, 547 B.C., Sardis remained the principal mint for the whole Persian Empire, and for which it turned out Sigloi as to the Babylonian standard, gives further strength to the idea.

10. Frederick William Madden, M.R.A.S.: Coins of the Jews, P.29; London; 1881.

11. Charles Seltsman: Greek Coins, pp. 34-35.

12. Frederick William Madden, M.R.A.S.: Coins of the Jews, P. 6. (footnote).

13. Cambridge Ancient History, P. 392, Vol. 1.

14. According to the table on P. 35, "Greek Coins" by C. Seltsman, the Aeginetan drachma was established without any doubt at its given standard, because in the time of Pheidon, the ratio of silver to iron was 400:1. He clearly had been advised to establish the new silver drachmas and obolos so that they would have the same purchasing power as the now discarded iron obolos and "Drax"...... according to their valuation in an International market where money was metal by weight.

15. Obviously for discounting Bills of Exchange, raising money against Bills of Lading, Warehouse Receipts, and the realization into that which circulated as money of the promissory note issued as between friends or otherwise.

16. Oskar Seffert: Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, P. 91.

17. Visiting Merchants and Ships’ Captains.

18. Oskar Seffert: Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, P. 91.

19. Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, P. 262; New York; 1968.

20. Referring to the Hellenic terminology in connection with banking transactions and professions etc. Professor Heichelheim of vast scholarship recorded,

"That the banking transactions of the individual bankers, money lenders, and debtors influenced the whole economic life and even, to a certain degree, the intellectual development in Attica, the territories of the Delian League and in many other polis territories of our period, since the fifth, if not occasionally sixth centuries B.C. will be obvious from the above list which has a surprising number of specializations..."

Fritz Heichelheim: An Ancient Economic History, Vol. II, pp. 196-197; Leyden; 1958-1970.

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TYRANT AND TRAPEZITAE

Of the tyrants of Greece and Asia Minor in ancient times, the learned Professor Heichelheim wrote:⁽¹⁾

"These tyrants were for the most part members of the nobility themselves who had made the grade using the new political and economic possibilities of their time to overthrow their own equals and to subdue their whole home state temporarily.

The tyrants were often compelled to introduce the coin economy pattern into the area over which they ruled, or at least to promote its development officially, in order to gain the upper hand over their enemies...

 

To stabilize the position of the peasantry on the land, and to expand and rebuild state economy, a central distribution of money and goods in kind partly directed towards mercenaries, bodyguards and various political friends, and partly indirectly to the masses of poor people in the form of wages paid for extensive building operations and improvements, is characteristic of tyrant economy..."

The above remarks of Professor Heichelheim indicate there were "new political and economic possibilities" in that period 650-500 B.C. when the tyrannies most of all flourished...

 

The question then becomes, what were these "new political and economic possibilities ?"...

 

The answer is arrived at readily; they derived from the activities of the agents of the international silver bullion brokers, who, from ports such as Argos, Athens, and Aegina where King Pheidon struck the first Greek silver coinage c.680 BC., promoted the luxury traders who sold their wares from wigs to harlots as against the new silver coinage or promise thereof.

 

The opportunities clearly were for those who assisted in the monetization of the city, and all its activities and possessions, and its population, man, woman, and child, and their possessions too, and thereby assisted in the firm establishment of the rule of bankers, trade, and traders, as against the gods ruling over mankind living in his natural order.

"The aristocracies refused political equality to the landless traders and manufacturers, the peasants were oppressed by the rich and encouraged to get into debt (as in these days) and then were reduced to slavery and exile; slaves began to compete with free labor. Ambitious individuals capitalized this discontent to overthrow the constituted government and establish themselves as tyrants in all the Greek cities with the notable exception of Sparta..." ⁽²⁾

The situation is very clear.

 

The kings and aristocracies as descended from ancient days, as a derivative of their folly in permitting the unrestricted activities of the new bankers, who were now well established in all the major cities of Greece outside of Sparta, saw a class of manufacturers and entrepreneurs come into being, largely foreigners and men of lowly origin. These men, more often than not with the means of nobility but the outlook of slaves, were clearly a serious threat to kings and nobility and the order they represented.

In the same manner during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries A.D., the worthy tradesmen of London, while still deferring to the natural nobility of the land, more and more realized, that they too were lords of the land through control of labor by the wage rates and needed little encouragement from that true source of their power, the bullion brokers, towards hatred of a government ⁽³⁾ which still gave them little say, for all the wealth that they were possessed of according to the new standards.

 

This government still continued, at least until Charles I, to consider one of its main duties was to prevent the oppression of the poor and the trusting,⁽⁴⁾ regardless of the so-called "needs of trade".

The similar class that rose in Greece some two thousand years previously, more and more realized that they were the new reality, and that they were now in actuality the lords of the land through labor, which they owned outright as slaves, or controlled as through daily wages. If the land itself they still did not own and control, it mattered not; for there were those voices that told them that land too was but a trade and a tool in the new order.

 

As their textiles (as at Megara), or pottery (as at Corinth), that every ship leaving harbor carried to the ends of the earth, so the land of the great lord was but the capital investment that grew the food that he the manufacturer purchased for himself and his slaves or the raw materials needed for his particular trade; and he himself, in the money creator’s kingdom on earth, was as assessable in coin as was potter, weaver, or armourer.

 

The land owning nobleman was a man controllable as themselves through the arts of taxation in terms of money, could they but institute a system of government in which the natural ruler had no more power to rule than themselves...

No doubt these worthy tradesmen of Megara, or Corinth, or Athens, led on by the attitude of their true masters, the trapezitae, the money creators, agents of those great and ancient banking houses of Babylon city, said to themselves of the natural lords of Hellas

"Who are these men ?"...

 

"For all their fine manners and clothing, we could buy them up a hundred times did they but know it !"

And so the stage was set for the arrival of the tyrant financed into existence by the bankers towards the total destruction of the old way of life, which still had within it the seeds of a strength sufficient to root out its enemies such as, in the case of Sparta, had been outstandingly proven by the renewal of the ancient life system through the financial and social reforms of Lycurgus.

 

Classes of manufacturers and entrepreneurs, contemptuous of a nobility that seemed to have betrayed its trust, were easily stirred to envy and resentment, and the work of destruction by the tyrant received little or no opposition.

"In order to level the class of large landowners and nobles economically, Theagenes of Megara simply allowed their herds of cattle to be slaughtered without remuneration. A frequent political device of tyrants from Asia Minor to Sicily was to murder or banish nobles, confiscate their possessions, and redistribute their wealth amongst the poor." ⁽⁵⁾

The poor, needless to say, soon returned to being poor again...

"The poor ye shall always have with you."

The poor merely being those who trust that their rulers are attending to serious matters as indicated by their position in the scale of life, such as governing.

 

The word "poor" having existed, of course, long before the crafty banker, standing in the shade beside the ways of life, arranged it that measure of poverty and riches was in that number of (privately issued) units of exchange in which a man could be assessed according to success or failure in the conflict of life, as he the banker had established it.

The tyrant, therefore, was that force by which international money power as it derived from the control of silver bullion and the slave markets, destroyed all resistance to its total ownership of life and labor and human hope... The status of all, slave or free, in some degree, depended on their relations with the trapezitae who presided at their table in the agora; and should they be kings or rulers of states, no doubt their destinies would be much influenced by those shadowy figures furtively watching from the counting houses of far away Mesopotamia...

 

According to the special nature of the times, the tyrant, in his capacity as ruler, would above all be guided instrument; but that the tyrant no more understood the true significance of his existence than do these so-called revolutionary "leaders" of today, is a certainty...

The so-called "revolutions" of today are clearly similar in their origins to those of the time of the tyrants; the main difference being more of a technicality... Until 1870 A.D. the arbitrary valuation of gold bullion as according to the decision of the bullion brokers, was common denominator of values internationally, with silver bullion in second place at the ratio as decided by the leading states; but still rarely varying a great deal from that ratio decided on nearly 2000 years ago by Julius Caesar and his financial advisors, of 12:1.⁽⁶⁾

 

After the demonetization of silver in almost all the major states of the world, in the seventies of the last century,⁽⁷⁾ the common denominator of values was gold alone, with silver just another commodity moving up and down on world markets according to supply and demand.

More than ample evidence exists of those persons designated international bankers in "Modern Times" as also the instigative factor in the principle so-called revolutions of the last three hundred years.

 

According to Commander Guy Carr,⁽⁸⁾ the so-called English revolution was totally the work of the international bullion brokers who seem at that time to have been lodged in Amsterdam, although the loan of silver bullion to Queen Elizabeth I ⁽⁹⁾ for the re-coinage that took place shortly after her accession to the throne as negotiated by the famous "Sicile",⁽¹⁰⁾ later Lord Burghley, came from Antwerp.

Some of the Crypto-Jews of the Commonwealth,⁽¹¹⁾ of whom many would have been in England during the reign of Charles I, would also appear to have been a factor in such revolution as witting or unwitting agents of the Amsterdam bullion brokers...⁽¹²⁾ The main designer of the events of those days seems to have been a Manasseh Ben Israel, "a remarkable character," who apparently took the initiative in the financing of Cromwell;⁽¹³⁾ which enabled Cromwell to obtain the best of arms, the first requisite of the would-be conqueror throughout history.

The arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese Marranos ⁽¹⁴⁾ in Holland in 1593 A.D., with the consequent harnessing of the Dutch, a seafaring people, naturally aggressive, to their world wide trade activities, and the resultant so-called "prosperity", immediately produced its impact in Britain.

 

The re-growth of the commercial power of these "New Dutch", more especially as deriving from the bullion trade which they seemed to continue to control internationally, principally due to the connections they continued to maintain in Spain, directed towards them a great part of the flood of the precious metals which was being wrung out of the wretched natives of South America particularly; not to speak of that which came from Japan, China, and India, of which not so much seems to be known.⁽¹⁵⁾

 

No sooner did these precious metals arrive in Spain or Portugal than almost immediately they moved on to other parts in settlement of trade debit balances created largely by the Spanish wars in Europe, particularly in Italy.⁽¹⁶⁾

This superfluity of the precious metals in Northern Europe certainly was one of the instigative factors, in the growth of "Banking", which had spread from Venice and Genoa, to Amsterdam, and from thence to London,⁽¹⁷⁾ where, evinced by the activities of the goldsmiths, it had set itself up against kings, as the whole story of the downfall of Charles I would indicate.

The political picture of Northern Europe derived a great deal of its changing character from the rise in prices which came about both as a result of the relatively tremendous influx of new precious metals at that time, and as a result of the growth of "Banking", that is private abstract money creation, which affected prices equally with that precious metal that could be seen as it circulated as money.

 

Kings, often in the hands of the venal advisors to whom the age gave rise, were no longer able to make both ends meet, and not understanding the true nature of the activities of the bankers or goldsmiths, they neither knew how to put a stop to such activities nor, if they permitted them, how to tax them...

The sullen resistance experienced by Charles I from the puritanical and self-righteous burghers of the City of London,⁽¹⁸⁾ most of whom were by then deeply beholden to the goldsmiths for their finances, who, in their turn were no doubt beholden to the Amsterdam bullion brokers for the gold they sometimes needed in a hurry when rumor went round that their receipts which circulated as money, were largely false and had nothing behind them except lies, may be traced to these same bullion brokers of Amsterdam...

Their policy above all required the weakening of kingship in England, for the "Banking" monopoly they saw they might come to institute in England, could not flourish with a king on the throne such as Charles who truly regarded himself as the Lord’s anointed... A king who was aware of the source of his power, even if not widely instructed therein, that is to say, who was aware of the true meaning of monetary creation and emission relative to his kingship, was not much to their liking....

 

The reinstitution of the office of a Royal Exchanger, abolished by Henry VIII in 1539 on the advice of a Sir Thomas Gresham,⁽¹⁹⁾ was also not much to their liking, nor the seizure by Charles of the £130,000 deposited in the Tower supposedly by the London merchants, reputed to have come from Spain en route to Dunkirk, Spanish possession at that time...

 

The reinstitution of the office of Royal Exchanger meant that one of the major sources of revenue of the goldsmiths, and therefore their masters, the bullion brokers was cut off: that which obtained from the exchange of coins, foreign or domestic; which meant, therefore, they were denied the opportunity to clip, or sweat, or retain for export those full-weight coins that came their way.⁽²⁰⁾

"The unsafe condition of a Bank under a Monarchy." ⁽²¹⁾

These words of Pepys indicate the trend of thought of certain circles at the time. Although Charles I could not be considered the most effective opposition to banking and its proponents, nevertheless, he was in the way; even if the cure to him—Cromwell—proved perhaps to be even more in the way! Cromwell’s "Bills of Public Faith", of which very little record remains, a true currency being intrinsically valueless, state issued, and inconvertible, must have been cause for grave misgivings on the part of the goldsmiths, and all concerned, as to whether they had done right in supporting the enemies of the king!

 

It was not long after the return to the throne of England of the Stuart Line in the person of the amenable Charles II, in 1660, that these "Bills of Public Faith," the real key to sovereignty, were repudiated;⁽²²⁾ showing that the son had even less understanding of the realities of money than had the father.⁽²³⁾

To return to Cromwell and the principal factors that lead up to his success, and his assumption of the powers of tyranny: when it became clear that Cromwell was as "suitable" a man as could be found to fit the needs of the occasion, Manasseh Ben Israel supplied him with the gifted Fernandez Carvajal, for the reorganization of his army, which became known as the "Model Army".

 

Trained revolutionaries then poured into the country, presiding over whom was the Portuguese Ambassador, a De Souza, who loaned them the diplomatic immunity of his house for their meetings. One such revolutionary was the man known today as Calvin, whose father had been fiscal agent to a prominent French Bishop.⁽²⁴⁾

These revolutionary leaders, besides developing the technique of spreading religious differences, also exploited the use of truculent mobs, a practice known to this class of people from most ancient times, for the gaining of political ends.

 

According to Commander Guy Carr, who is a relatively recent writer on this subject: ⁽²⁵⁾

"The evidence which absolutely convicts Oliver Cromwell of participating in the revolutionary plot was obtained by Lord Alfred Douglas, who edited a weekly review known as Plain English published by the North British Publishing Company.

 

In an article which appeared in the issue of Sept. 3rd 1921, he explained that he and his friend, Mr. L.D. Van Valckert of Amsterdam, Holland, had come into possession of a missing volume of records of the Synagogue of Mulheim. This volume had been lost during the Napoleonic Wars. The volume contained records of letters written to and answered by the directors of the Synagogue.

They are written in German. One entry dated June 16th, 1647 reads: From O.C. (i.e.) Oliver Cromwell to Ebenezer Pratt.

‘In return for financial support will advocate admission... to England; this however impossible while Charles living. Charles cannot be executed without trial, adequate grounds for which do not at present exist. Therefore advise that Charles be assassinated, but will have nothing to do with the arrangements for procuring an assassin, though willing to help in his escape.’

In reply to this dispatch the records show E. Pratt wrote a letter dated July 12th, 1647 addressed to Oliver Cromwell.

‘Will grant financial aid as soon as Charles removed and... admitted.⁽²⁶⁾ Assassination too dangerous. Charles should be given an opportunity to escape. His recapture will then make trial and execution possible. The support will be liberal but useless to discuss terms until trial commences.’

On November 12th, that same year, Charles was given the opportunity to escape. He was, of course, recaptured. Hollis and Ludlow, authorities on this chapter of history, are both on record as considering the flight as the stratagem of Cromwell. After Charles had been recaptured, events moved apace. Cromwell had the British Parliament purged of most of the members he knew were loyal to the King.

 

Notwithstanding this drastic action, when the house sat all night on December 6th, 1648, the majority agreed,

‘That the concessions offered by the king were satisfactory to a settlement.’

Any such settlement would have disqualified Cromwell from receiving the blood money promised him by the international money barons through their agent E. Pratt, so Cromwell struck again. He ordered Colonel Pryde to purge Parliament of those members who had voted in favour of a settlement with the King. What then happened is referred to in history books as ‘Pryde’s purge’. When the purge was finished, fifty members remained. They are recorded as the ‘Rump Parliament’.

 

They usurped absolute power. On January 30th, 1649, he was publicly beheaded in front of the banqueting house at Whitehall, London... Oliver Cromwell received his blood money just as Judas had done." ⁽²⁷⁾

On the same somewhat obscure page of history, Professor Andreades pointed out in his History of the Bank of England,⁽²⁸⁾ that Cromwell’s best known historians pay little attention to the subject of his relations with the Jews and their return to England. Carlyle and Morley devoting no more than a page to this highly controversial event.⁽²⁹⁾ The reader gains the impression that more was to be said on the subject...

 

He asserts himself:

"It is certain that as soon as Charles I was dead, the Jews attempted to return to England." ⁽³⁰⁾

The following statements by Benjamin Franklin in reference to the causes of the American Revolution are equally illuminating:

"About this time (the time of the Treaty of Paris, 1763), Benjamin Franklin made a visit to England. While there he was asked how he accounted for the prosperous conditions of the colonies. His reply was: ‘That is simple. It is only because in the colonies we issue our own money. It is called "Colonial Scrip" and we issue it in the proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry.’ "

(See Senate Document No. 23, Page 98, by Robert L. Owen,⁽³¹⁾ former Chairman, Committee on Banking and Currency, United States Senate.)

Robert L. Owen continues:

"It was not very long until this information was brought to the Rothschild’s Bank, and they saw that here was a nation ready to be exploited; here was a nation setting up an example that they could issue their own money instead of the money coming through the Banks. The Rothschild’s Bank caused a bill to be introduced in the English Parliament, therefore, which provided that no colony of England could issue its own money. They had to use English money. Consequently the colonies were compelled to discard their ’scrip’ and mortgage themselves to the Bank of England (the Amsterdam Bullion Brokers!) to get money. For the first time in the history of the United States our money began to be based on debt."

"Benjamin Franklin stated that in one year from that date the streets of the colonies were filled with the unemployed, because when England exchanged with them, she gave them only half as many units in payment in borrowed money from the Rothschild as they had in ’scrip’. In other words, their circulating medium was reduced 50%, and everyone became unemployed according to Benjamin Franklin’s own statement."

Continuing the quote from Senate Document No. 23:

"Mr. Franklin went further than that. He said that this was the original cause of the revolutionary war. In his own language: ‘The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money which created unemployment and dissatisfaction’." ⁽³²⁾

The French Revolution, so called, left much less evidence of its origins than the so-called Russian Revolution 120 years later, though the instigating factor is clear enough. The French Revolution by Nesta Webster, The Life of Napoleon by Sir Walter Scott, almost unobtainable, and above all the chapters in God and the Goldsmiths by McNair Wilson, on Napoleon Bonaparte, give some light on this matter.

 

A study of Louis XV and his relations to the Pâris Brothers, the state tax farmers, especially through Madame Du Pompadour, formerly Poisson, possibly illegitimate child of Pâris Duverney and god-daughter of Pâris Monmartel, yields impressions.

 

The writings of Necker, front man for the international bankers of the time, and who Mirabeau described as "the Hero who arrived by famine" should be read, and also the writings of Turgot, finance Minister to Louis XVI, who fought against Necker and the evil fraternity behind him, and who nicely summed up the situation in his first memorandum to Louis XVI as follows:

"So long as finance shall be continually subject to the old expedients in order to provide for state services, your Majesty will always be dependent on financiers, and they ever will be the masters, and by the maneuvers belonging to their trade they will frustrate the most important operations. Thus the government can never feel itself at ease, it can never be acknowledged as able to sustain itself, because the discontents and impatience of the people are always the means made use of by intriguing and ill-disposed men in order to excite disturbance." ⁽³³⁾

Clearly the Minister Turgot was a man of sincerity and integrity, a true God-servant, and the fact that it was only after prolonged scheming on the part of the international bankers, who mostly lived outside of France, that he was dismissed,⁽³⁴⁾ would suggest that his master also sought to do that which he was borne to do, that is, love, guide, and protect the people...

 

But neither master nor man understood the strength of the undercurrents which flowed, nor, it is to be feared, the true meaning of l’etat c’est moi!... which in essence means,

"I am the fount of Life. I am that point through which the Almighty God injects your money amongst you that binds you together as one. I, and no other; not my steward, nor servant, faithful or unfaithful..."

The men of intrigue he referred to, were such stewards, the international bankers. These men, standing behind thrones intercepted that God-Power from on high which was the force behind l’etat c’est moi!, and, controlling the value of money of whatever kind, and therefore international price levels, with responsibility only to them and theirs, confused the nations with their sly schemes of fatuous purpose.

The instigating factor of the Russian Revolution so-called is common knowledge and is detailed in a hundred books. Perhaps one of the best sources of information relating to the financing of the same Russian "Revolution" is the book Czarism and Revolution written by Arsene De Goulévitch, a former officer of the Czar’s army and founder of the Union for the Defense of Oppressed Peoples.

According to information deriving from the French Secret Service, one of the principal sources of finances for the International Revolutionary Movement prior to 1917, was Jacob Schiff of the International banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb, and Company, based in New York City. It was recorded that twelve million dollars had been donated to the revolutionaries by Schiff, in the years preceding the war of 1914-1918. This fact is apparently confirmed and amplified from sources other than the French Secret Service.⁽³⁵⁾

The main funds for the so called "Revolution" and towards the steps which led up to it, do not appear to have come from that class of nouveau riche bred into being in Russia out of the activities over the previous 50 years, of the joint stock banks, and the men such as Sawa Morozov, and Tereschenko,⁽³⁶⁾ the socialistic sugar magnate.

 

The extensive funds so necessary towards the effective disruption of a major state appear to have come from certain British and American circles, which it seems, had been lending their support to the Russian revolutionary "cause", for a long time. In his book, My Life, Trotsky speaks of a large loan granted in 1907 by a "Financier" belonging to the so-called "Liberal" Party in Britain. This particular "British" financier was apparently not alone in his monetary support of the "Revolution" in Russia.⁽³⁷⁾

The conduct of Jacob Schiff, previously mentioned, towards Czarist Russia, once he was installed as head of the New York "International Banking" firm of Kuhn, Loeb, and Company, was that of an apparently unyielding enemy. References to his anti-czarist activities exist in the book by Cyrus Adler: Jacob Schiff, his Life and Letters.⁽³⁸⁾

Further verification of the activities of Jacob Schiff is afforded by the New York "Journal American" of February 3rd, 1949; a time when pro-revolutionary activities were "The Thing" in New York City:⁽³⁹⁾

"today it is estimated by Jacob’s grandson, John Schiff, that the old man sank about $20,000,000.00 for the triumph of Bolshevism in Russia." ⁽⁴⁰⁾

According to Goulévitch (P. 231), various other persons well known in the world of international banking, whatever the expression "International Banking" might mean,⁽⁴¹⁾ were also known to be associated with support of revolutionary activities.

 

The ruin to the states of the world set on foot by these immensely rich, but otherwise trifling persons, whose solidarity, however, had enabled them to so profit from the unbelievable expansion of the use of Ledger Credit Page Entry Money in the Anglo-Saxon banking systems, could not better demonstrate the absurdity of allowing private, and therefore irresponsible, persons to exercise that power which should belong to the gods alone, the power inherent in the creation and issuance of the Unit of Exchange amongst the peoples.

In a speech made six weeks before the fall of the Kerensky Government, Lenin made one of his most significant recommendations and perhaps the one most suggestive of the possibility of his sincerity, even if in the rest he seems to have been misguided.

 

It was the one recommendation most indicative of his awareness of the deep-seated causes of the conditions that had given rise to himself and what he stood for... Additional to proposing nationalization of the great monopolies already existing in Russia, (primarily as the result of the admission of joint-stock banking into the country as concession to the victors of the Crimean war), above all he recommended the total nationalization of banking.

 

In his own words he says:

..."all banks to be merged into one and the state control its operations, that is the nationalization of the banks."

..."To talk about regularization of banks," continues Lenin, "means either to betray complete ignorance, or to fool the simple folk with high sounding words... to control the delivery of bread, or in general, the production and distribution of goods, without controlling banking practices, is an absurdity"

(Collected Works [1964], vol. 25, p. 329) ⁽⁴²⁾

Of course, six weeks later, when Lenin had physically seized power with the aid of his "armed bandits", it was a small matter to set up printing presses in the major cities in Russia that commenced to pour off paper rubles by the billion. Some fourteen or fifteen thousand workers were busily engaged in the government printing shops of Moscow, Leningrad, Penza, Perm, and Rostov-on-Don, turning out tons upon tons of paper money.

 

The printing of notes was simplified to a point where counterfeiting became easy...⁽⁴³⁾

At the same time safety deposit boxes were seized, all accounts frozen and the banks were closed, so that there was no addition to the circulation existing outside of banks at the start of this "operation," a great part of which circulation would have been gold; and no new money came on the scene other than the paper rubles of the Bolshevik printing presses which immediately took the place of that Ledger Credit Page Money by manipulation of which the banks had previously controlled a great deal of trade.

For a year or two the Monarchist rubles were printed as if there was intention to keep the people half expecting that the Czar would be coming back, then for a short while a ‘Kerenki’ ruble was printed, presumably issue of the short lived Kerensky government, as if to prepare the people for total resignation, and then finally, the Bolshevik ruble which let the people know that all was indeed lost.

 

This continuing the money of a destroyed king seems to have been no new policy of international money power, especially in the case of those kings, its particular enemies. An illustration of which, occurring in ancient times, was the continued minting at the Sardis mint of the sigloi of Croesus long after he had been destroyed.

 

The printing press money of the Russian Revolution entered the circulation against government expenditures and against gold coin which it became illegal to possess, no doubt being accompanied by an equal amount of counterfeit, also exchanged against gold.

These vigorous moves must have been cause for some misgivings amongst the bankers who continued to finance the "Revolution" so far as went Bolshevik needs in foreign exchange. But no doubt so closely surrounded was Lenin by their agents,⁽⁴⁴⁾ they would have been justified in reasoning that they would come out on top again without too much trouble, especially with the new rubles being so easy to counterfeit. And during that period of the so-called "New Economic Policy", approximately 1920-24, they did so come out on top...

In the archives of the State Publishers of Moscow is recorded the following eulogy to the printing press as being as great a force in the so-called revolution as armies:

"Paper money of the Soviet Republic gave support to the young regime at the most critical period of its existence when there was no possibility of raising direct taxes to meet the outlays of the civil war.

 

Hail to our printing press ! It is true that its days are numbered but it has already completed three quarters of its work. In the archives of the proletarian revolution along with the cannon, rifles, and machine guns of our epoch that vanquished the enemies of the proletariat, the place of honor will be given to the printing press, the machine gun of the commissariat of finance that poured fire into the rear of the bourgeois system and that made use of the laws of currency and circulation of that regime for the purpose of destroying it, and of financing the revolution." ⁽⁴⁵⁾

Typically enough the "Tyrant" himself, Vladimir I. Lenin, saw little or no profit out of all this, for himself, the Russian people, or that ideal of world revolution in which it appears he sincerely believed. If he truly was the author of the above statements regarding banking, then, when he died not so long after all these events, it was as a weary and disillusioned man.

 

For that gold, still very much the base for total control of world finance, which was wrung from the Russian people during the period of terror between 1917 and 1922, seems to have almost all found its way back to the "Benefactors" of the original revolutionaries, Messrs. Kuhn, Loeb, and Company of New York (Jacob Schiff’s firm), and it must have been clear to Lenin by the time he died in 1924 that he was but agent of a force that regarded him as merely another tool to be used towards the making of that which they designed.

"Mr. Bakhmetiev, the late Russian Imperial Ambassador to the United States, tells us that the Bolsheviks, after victory, transferred 600 million roubles in gold between the years 1918 and 1922, to Kuhn, Loeb, and Company (Schiff’s firm)" ⁽⁴⁶⁾... which makes pretty good return for the mere 20,000,000 dollars granted by the philanthropic Mr. Schiff and which would have been as credits against purchases at that!

At that time such amount of gold could be used to form the apex of an inverted pyramid of abstract money equal in amount to beyond thirty times the number of units such gold represented in U.S. currency according to its official price...



References

1. Fritz Heichelheim: An Ancient Economic History, Vol. 1, P. 290; Leyden. 1958. 1970.

2. Houghton Mifflin (Publishers): Encyclopedia of World History, P. 48; Boston; 1940.

3. A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, P. 22; London; 1966.

4. Sir William Ashley: Economic Organizations of England, P. 96-118. London; 1933.

5. Fritz Heichelheim: An Ancient Economic History, Vol. I, P. 290.

6. A. Del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, P. 81; New York, 1968.

7. A. Del Mar: Money and Civilization. Also John R. Elsom. pp. 49-50.

8. Commander Guy Carr: Pawns in the Game, pp. 19, 20, 21.

9. G. Ravenscroft Dennis: The House of Cecil, P. 61. London, 1914.

10. Illustrated London News, Nov. 11th, 1911, P. 762.

11. Lucien Wolf: The Resettlement of the Jews in England; London; 1888.

12. A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, P. 28.

13. F.P.G. Guizot: Histoire de la République d'angleterre, pp. 154-155; Paris; 1854.

14. Max Dimont: Jews, God, and History, P. 291. New York; 1962.

15. According to the letters of Quang Chang Ling (1878); (History of the Precious Metals; P. 348; A. Del Mar):

" It was in the year 1498 that the Portuguese made their way around the Cape (of Good Hope). In 1510, under Albuquerque, they treacherously seized the East Indian city of Goa, and leaving a garrison in it, sailed away to Malacca which they had seen and coveted in 1508... They plundered Malacca of a booty so enormous that the Quinto, or fifth, of the king of Portugal amounted to 200.000 gold cruzados, a sum equivalent to $5,000,000.00..."

" We have our own theory concerning the sources of your present riches. We ascribe it in part, to your gains from the piratical conquest, enslavement and murderous extinction of the American races, but chiefly to the profitable trade with the Orient. From the opening of this trade to 1640, when the Portuguese were driven from Japan, and the British first acquired territory in Hindustan, three of your European nations alone took a thousand million dollars in gold and silver from Asia; two thirds as much as they wrung from all America during the same period. From Malacca alone they took 25.000.000; from Japan, up to the date mentioned, four hundred millions; from India and China still greater sums (in gold or silver coin, or bullion)..."

16. The Chapters in Del Mar’s History of Civilization dealing with this period, will repay the reading.

17. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, pp. 14-32.

18. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, P. 19-20.

19. Ibid. P. 22.

20. A. del Mar: History of Monetary Crimes, PP. 7-44.

21. Pepys Diary, Aug 17th, 1666. Diary and Correspondence. 5 vols. London, 1848.

22. Anderson, Adam, P. 485, An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce, Vol. II, London, 1787-1789.

23. Charles II was totally in the hands of the bankers and goldsmiths as is revealed by the following extract from D. MacPherson’s Annals of Commerce, (P. 428).

"Charles being in want of money, the bankers took 10% of him barefacedly, and by private contracts on many bills, orders, tallies and debts of that King, they got 20, sometimes 30% to the great dishonor of Government. This great gain induced the Goldsmiths to become more and more lenders to the King, to anticipate all the revenues, to take every grant of Parliament into pawn as soon as it was given; also to outvie each other in buying and taking to pawn bills, orders and tallies, so that in effect, all the revenue passed through their hands."

24. Will Durant: The Reformation; P. 459.

25. Commander Guy Carr: Pawns in the Game, P. 20.

26. According to A. Andreades (History of the Bank of England. P. 30.), Frederick Harrison says in his biography of Oliver Cromwell:

"Noble were the efforts of the Protector to impress his own spirit of toleration on the intolerance of his age... He effectively protected the Quakers; he admitted the Jews after an expulsion of three centuries, and he satisfied Mazarin that he had given to Catholics all the protection that he dared..."

27. Commander Guy Carr: Pawns in the Game, P. 19-21.

28. A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, P. 28.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. Robert L. Owen was the senator who wrote and introduced the legislation setting up the Federal Reserve (Central Banking) system in 1913. His foreword to a book written by a Miss Gertrude Coogan shows that he lived to bitterly regret his part in writing and introducing this Bill. The remark made later by President Wilson, who had paved the way for the Bill — " I am a most unhappy man. Unwittingly I have ruined my country " — shows that Owen was not alone in his remorse...

 

The Central Banking System known as the Federal Reserve System and towards the creation of which he had been the principal instrument, though apparently state department in the same way as the Bank of England, was in reality no more than the instrument through which the so-called International Bankers harnessed the burgeoning energies of the American peoples to themselves, their own world wide needs and purposes. From first to last, which perhaps has not yet come, it was a privately owned and controlled institution.

32. John R. Elsom: Lightning over the Treasury Building, PP. 29-30; Forum Press; Boston.

33. R. McNair Wilson: God and the Goldsmiths, P. 48.

34. His dismissal was effected through the agency of Marie-Antoinette. As she disliked Turgot personally, no doubt she was a ready instrument.

35. A. Goulévitch: Czarism and Revolution, P. 225.

36. Ibid. P. 223.

37. Ibid., P. 224.

38. Cyrus Adler: Jacob Schiff, His Life and Letters, New York, 1928.

39. Although it is really very difficult to see what exactly would have been left for this class of people, often multi-millionaires, to revolt against by 1949, which also includes the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon in the United States.

40. Also according to the author of Czarism and Revolution (P. 224),... " in the Spring of 1917, Jacob Schiff openly boasted of having been instrumental in overthrowing the Czarist regime..."

41. According to Dr. Carroll Quigley (P. 52.) in the review by W. Cleon Skousen outstanding characteristics of the international bankers were:

"...they remained different from ordinary bankers in distinctive ways:

(1) they were cosmopolitan and international

(2) they were close to governments and were particularly concerned with questions of government debts...

(3) their interests were almost exclusively in bonds and very rarely in goods...

(4) they were accordingly fanatical devotees of deflation...

(5) they were almost equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of financial influence in political life

These bankers came to be called ‘international bankers’ and, more particularly, were known as ‘merchant’ bankers in England, ‘private bankers’ in France, and ‘investment bankers’ in the United States. In all countries they carried on various kinds of banking and exchange activities, but everywhere they were sharply distinguishable from other, more obvious kinds of banks, such as savings banks or commercial banks."

42. Arthur Zapolsky Arnold, Ph.D.: Banks, Credit, and Money in Soviet Russia, P. 57; Columbia; 1937. Also see the article by Lenin in "Pravda," May 29th-30th, 1917: The threatening catastrophe and boundless promises.

Of equal interest and strikingly similar in the language used is the comment of Lionel Rothschild on the subject of banking as quoted by Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin D’israeli) in 1844: "can anything be more absurd than that a nation should apply to an individual to maintain its credit, and with its credit, its existence as a state and its comfort as a people;... ?"

43. Arthur Zapolsky Arnold: Banks, Credit, and Money in Soviet Russia, P. 96; Columbia; 1937.

44. Fr. Dennis Fahey: Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, Dublin; 1964.

45. (a) Arthur Zapolsky Arnold: Banks, Credit, and Money in Soviet Russia, pp. 96-97. (b) Paper Money during the epoch of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, (Moscow State Publishers, 1920) P. 4.

46. A. Goulévitch: Czarism and Revolution, P. 225.

Back to Contents

 

 

POTSHERDS AND OTHER FRAGMENTS

The glimpse at these cataclysmic events of relatively modern times, as in the previous chapter, will assist towards understanding of the implications of similar events in ancient times of which but the most fragmentary information exists.

 

As was written three thousand years ago:

"Is there anything whereof it may be said; See this is new ?
it hath been already of old time which was before us." ⁽¹⁾

So returning to that smaller world of ancient days, the theme of this book, it may safely be said that similar conspiracy and secret manoeuvre led up to all that fast changing sequence of social events that clearly followed a definite design, in Attica; particularly from the collapse of hereditary kingship in 683 B.C.; which date marks, it most reasonably may be assumed, the commencement of rule by Money Creative Power either international or home grown... A king created annually by vote has even less chance of ruling effectively than the so-called presidents of today, elective kings as they really are, though sorry enough spectacles some of them may be, and who have as much as five years to serve the purposes of whoever they front for...

Some writers dismiss the idea of a capitalism in antiquity, but accepting definition of capitalism as the condition of the unrestricted promotion of human activity through the instrument of the driving force of that power of creation, and loan against collateral, and at interest, of the unit of exchange, or of promises of the unit of exchange as denoted by Ledger Credit Page Entry, and which function as the same thing in exchanges between persons dealing with the same banker or interlocked system of banks, very little analysis of the circumstances that gave rise to the tyrants will show that a form of "capitalism" did exist, even if more local in character, and restricted to the individual city, or state, as a rule.

 

The tyrant was front man towards the total monetization of the state, the land and its labor, and towards the transfer of that independent labor formerly firmly placed in the Natural Order of God-Life, to a condition of dependence on a wage of money, directed towards being able to keep on living as with the notion of being a free man.

Today we but repeat the mistakes of the past; however today it is not merely disaster to a small city or state and its way of life, but with the existing refinement of that which can only be described as the money swindle as it was conducted in ancient times by the trapezitae at their bench in the market place, made possible by mass paper manufacture and the printing press, and the enormous potentialities therein towards quickening the speed and drive of human life and endeavor, it almost certainly will prove to be, one way or another, total disaster, and to all mankind...

Those lines of Solon say enough:

But of themselves in their folly the men of the city are willing
Our great city to wreck, being won over by wealth.
False are the hearts of the people's leaders.⁽²⁾

A further couplet indicates the meaning of "our great city to wreck".

Great men ruin a city: for lack of understanding
Under a despot's yoke lieth the people enslaved.⁽³⁾

These lines written after the seizure by Peisistratus of the Tyranny at Athens would indicate that the same Peisistratus had the assistance in his rise to power of those former great landowning families of Attica who had been drawn into the schemes of the foreign money masters to their undoing... These landowners had forgotten their duty towards their own people.

 

Fascinated by strange luxuries and the stranger talk of the money men, the trapezitae, they had permitted themselves to be absorbed with visions of that new wealth measured by the numbers indicated by the precious metal symbols of these same trapezitae... They forgot that in the absolute analysis they themselves were but stewards of a higher power. Lacking understanding, above all, of the true nature of this money as being above all their own law towards the facilitation of the exchanges amongst themselves and their people, they had been lead astray from their duty.

 

By conniving with the bankers and their protégées the new manufacturers, to drive their own people off the land into the cities, and into the industries rapidly speeding up from the new money economy, they forgot that in their capacity as rulers, the whole land was theirs in trust to their people, and that the people therefore were expectant of them to be their guides and shepherds.

These plausible aliens who set up the money economy via their so-called "banks", owned nothing but unmitigated gall, a vast contempt for mankind, and such as they could double-talk the naïve peasant rulers into giving them.

The folly of these rulers in equating possession with the master moneyers trifling pieces of gold and silver dated back to those grim Kings of the Homeric Sagas or before, who, being lain in their graves at Mycenae with all their riches, thus set off on their eternal journey with that small store of gold that the crafty Babylonian money-men had trained them to regard as wealth, as opposed to the real wealth of an organized state whose money was the benevolent law of the ruler in relation to surpluses, and directed towards the good and continuing life of the people and no more...

Those who had power and made men to marvel at their riches.⁽⁴⁾

This line indicates that Solon, like so many equally worthy people of this day, knew that money was an evil without understanding what it was about money that made it so... Not the having of the precious metal pieces of the banker recording the number of units represented, for such metal money lying inert beneath the floors ⁽⁵⁾ has no meaning so far as the quickening or slowing of the pulse of life is concerned...

 

It has no more meaning than have abstract units of exchange media that have not yet been recorded in the ledger on account of no suitable (to the banker!) demand for them... and, of course, they are without limit... Nor even the spending of it as the holder, according to law, might choose...

 

The evil is in the forgetfulness of the ruler that money is no more than a recording of his law of exchange, its magnitude being governed by the number of units indicated... It can never be treasure which is merely items carrying with them a high valuation in relation to such units, relative to their desirability and portability... The evil about money derives in consequence from lack of understanding of its true nature, and particularly from the confusing of money and treasure.

 

It is the persistent failure of mankind to realize that money is but the result of agreement being arrived at amongst a sovereign people through their ruler, to provide themselves with a system of numbers by which their exchanges might be facilitated, and so help them to live a better life...

 

Treasure being but commodity by which the unit of value of whatever state may be, can best be stored; even though such state cease to exist; because of that ancient and international convention in respect to the valuation of such treasure such as has lasted from age to age; from the most ancient times, Palaeolithic or earlier, until today...

The evil lay and it may be said, lies, in the forgetfulness of the ruler to respect his duty to provide an adequate money supply for his people regulated by himself and free of obligation to external forces, in such manner as had existed in the Ancient Oriental civilizations in earlier times... It lay in the permitting to private and hence irresponsible persons the power to intervene in that which was the most sacred responsibility of the ruler through the priesthood, the creation and regulation of the medium of exchange: his people's money.

Therefore the hidden force behind the setting up of a tyranny was the far reaching power of a conspiratorial secret society, international in scope, controlling money emission in all countries which it penetrated through its continuing control of the sources of supply of that silver treasure by weight such as constituted the base of the exchange systems long ago established by itself.

The tyrant, therefore, was clearly the front man for the local banker more than actually being the banker himself... He it was who gave legality to the banker and the activities of that coterie of merchants, traders, and captains who flourished on the banker's financial organization, and, though this they did not understand, his connection with those international bullion brokers of the day.

 

These worthy businessmen depended for tiding themselves over difficult periods on that which the banker loaned them as money: maybe an entry in a ledger transferable to the account of a fellow merchant, visiting captain, or trader in slaves, or other merchandise; they also depended on the banker to be safe custodian for such treasure as came their way...

 

The tyrant was therefore, either naïve or corrupt, the instrument set up by the banker, firstly towards the legalization of his status, and secondly towards the removal of that class who might yet challenge his peculiar and secret power, the natural aristocracy of Hellas.

This natural aristocracy, in a growing system that clearly sought the alienation and subversion of its free dependents with the purpose of ultimately leading them into paid day labor or into slavery final and absolute, was uncertainly situated in states which now owed their existence to the bankers, and their coterie of entrepreneurs, and manufacturers, and merchants, as clearly did so many of the Greek states of the Greek industrial revolution.

The banker, lurking in the shade apart from men, knew that these proud noblemen, formerly lords of this lovely land which was Greece, had forgotten the meaning of their own existence, and its relation to the total ordering of their society, and he despised them as well he might, for permitting him to undermine the true order of life and cause these simple folk, their peasantry, to be driven off the land one way or another, to the wage slavery of the potteries at Corinth, or Athens, or wherever it might be or whatever it might be.

In the same way, the Lords of the Manors of England and Scotland had driven the peasantry off the common lands some 2400 years later; land now representing that magic of money of which previously they had seen little...

 

The same peasantry drifting into the new manufacturing and mining towns, dazed and leaderless, then formed a plentiful labor supply for that similar putrescent wickedness which was the industrial revolution in England's green and pleasant land. If they were lucky they were able to emigrate.

In the lines of Theognis whose political aim was to prevent a recurrence of the Tyranny in Megara which was a centre for the manufacture of textiles:

Tradesmen reign supreme: the bad lord it over their betters.
This is the lesson that all must thoroughly master:
How that in the world wealth has the might and the power.
Many a bad man is rich and many a good man is needy.
Not without cause, Oh Wealth, do men honor thee above all things.
Must men reckon the only virtue the making of money ?
Everyone honors those that are rich and despises the needy.⁽⁶⁾

The banker, trained from the money shops of Babylonia, knew that for him the only desirable political situation was where the lowly and vulgar ⁽⁷⁾ held the appearance of power and wealth and "money", for such would not question too intently the source from whence they derived that "money", nor the nature of that "money" such as had paved their way to so-called power, for fear its so necessary supply might be cut off.

 

In the words of Aristophanes:

Often has it crossed my fancy that the cities apt to deal
With the very best and noblest of the Commonweal
Just as with our ancient coinage, and the fine new minted gold
These, sir, our sterling pieces, all of pure Athenian mould,
All of perfect die and metal, all the fairest of the fair,
All of workmanship unequalled, proved and valued everywhere,
These we use not. But the worthless pinchbeck coins of yesterday,
Vilest die and basest metal, now we always use instead.
Even so our sterling townsmen, nobly born and nobly bred,
Men of worth and rank and mettle, men of honorable fame,
Trained in every liberal science, choral dance and manly game,
These we treat with scorn and insult. But the strangers newliest come,
Worthless sons of worthless fathers, pinchbeck townsmen, coppery scum
(Whom in earlier days the city hardly would have stooped to use
Even for her scapegoat victims) these for every task we choose.⁽⁸⁾

Where, as in a city such as Megara, one banking house might control all credit or money creation, to question and seek to know how this was done would also mean search for knowledge of the banker's secrets and this, our tyrant instinctively knew, was dangerous for his continued success.

What are the gains that lead up to a tyranny? Is it not more probable that they are some form of payment received by the commons (those that are bad) from the would-be tyrant ?

Not at all... Merely the word was passed by that banking institution to which the majority of tradesmen or manufacturers in that particular city were indebted, that the banker, giver of all, (and taker of all!), favored this move. Ah!... and indeed it would be good for all, and to please the common people there would be plenty of work!... It may safely be considered that the first legislation passed by our new tyrant would legalize the position of his backers, which previously, as likely as not, had been illegal!

The tyrant at this stage of history, was a necessity to Money Power, and while possibly having the appearance of being wealthy, he depended for his real finances on that backer whose interests he promoted. Those two officers of Alexander for example, who accepted the tyranny of Asiatic cities could in no way have understood the reality of finance, international or otherwise, except perhaps if they had been clerks in the paymaster corps of officer status. If they had so understood such finance, it is doubtful that they would have been promoted as they were...

The tyrant was one who the banker could rely on to put through his "Leveling" program, or in the double talk of today, could be relied on to "Press ahead with Democratization", and to work against the class from which he was supposed to have come.⁽⁹⁾

 

He was one who could be relied on to put through programs of public works, maintain military expenditures etc.; for all such activities strengthened the banker's position as creator and regulator of the exchange unit, and therefore, from those exclusive courtyards wherein he schemed, designer of the life of the city. The banker could not maintain his hold over the city, except his product, ledger credit page entry money, however created, was in constant demand, and the local government deeply embroiled in his schemes.

 

The tyrant had to be one completely in accord with that so-called "democratic" political attitude, which the banker always seemed to espouse... His ostensible purpose had to be to "Level"; such leveling meaning of course, tearing down everything above themselves, (and above the banker too!...)

Those fragments of verse as quoted here, reputed to be by Solon, leave little doubt of the sincerity of Solon, at least superficially. The fact remains that as a merchant, whether of necessity or otherwise, he must have been marked with some of the outlook of that class.

 

His famous laws, amongst which was that law releasing the peasantry from the debt slavery into which their natural rulers had permitted them to be drawn, and that was eating into the very vitals of Attica, in view of the fact that he offered citizenship to any family moving to Athens with the intention of taking up some manual trade, might very well have been promoted by his backers.

 

The city was clearly very short of suitable free labor. It very well might be that his backers were those money lenders and bankers that controlled the growing manufacturies of Athens, and who saw that there was more profit and work for that which they loaned as money, in bringing the peasantry to Athens as free men (if a wage slave is really any more free than a slave owned outright!) ⁽¹⁰⁾ and in having thus a plentiful supply of labor, than in tying such peasantry to the soil by debt slavery, and in the case of distraint, their sale on to a surfeited market abroad.

 

While there was still a healthy population of small holders as well as the great landlords, there was always possibility of recovery by the enslaved state, and themselves, the enslavers, as happened at Sparta in the time of Lycurgus, driven out of the land for hundreds of years... With a massive proletariat beholden to the men of the city for their freedom (as day laborers!), the former aristocracy even if they should ever awaken to their duty, would have no chance... Nor did they.

 

All those "liberalizing" laws promulgated by Solon and his successors, steadily deprived the ancient families of Attica of their former power and prerogative. The shadow of power was put into the hands of ignoble persons, as indeed would have been so many of the "Demagogues", and other "Democratic" officials, who, too often would have been no more than blind creatures lifted up from the mob to the service of money power...

 

By the devices existing as part of what is known as "democracy", such as Ostrakism through rumor put into circulation by the secret societies in the city, controlled, as in today, by the bankers without a doubt, "Leaders" no longer "suitable" could be removed.

"The tyrants themselves are repeatedly found making it part of their policy to keep their subjects employed on big industrial concerns. In more than one case we shall see their power collapsing just when this policy becomes financially impossible." ⁽¹¹⁾

In other words if that tyrant proved unsatisfactory to his masters, money that source of strength in political life, was cut off just at the time it would be most needed, such as when he had become involved in heavy spending.

 

Herein is further proof of the tyrant being not money power itself, but front man for money power...

"...This part of the tyrant's policy is noticed by Aristotle who quotes the dedications (buildings and works of art) of the Cypselids at Corinth, the buildings of Olymphian Zeus at Athens by the Peisistratids, and the works of Polycrates around Samos. To these names we add Theagenes of Megara, Phalaris of Agrigentum, Aristodemus of Cumae and the Tarquins of Rome, all of whom are associated with works of this kind." ⁽¹²⁾

It is pointed out by Professor Ure that it can scarcely be an accident that the Tyranny of Athens ended almost immediately after the removal of one of its two roots; the mines of the country of the Thracians and Paionians ⁽¹³⁾... Which is to say that if the source of bullion on which the money power of a so-called banker was founded, petered out, or was lost to enemy action, the tyrant he had promoted could be discarded as having no further purpose.

Such activities being ordered by a class of persons who had achieved despotic power in the same period of history, roughly the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries B.C., the period which saw extensive development of mining in all of Europe including Lydia, Cyprus, Spain,⁽¹⁴⁾ Carpathia, Epirus, Illyria, Thrace and Greece itself, without mentioning the flow of precious metal plunder deriving from the depredations of the Assyrian, can only have been the result of a policy deep laid, and far reaching in its consequences.

 

This policy can only have been created in some central point from which flowed the springs of world power such as would have designed, wittingly, or unwittingly, so much of the ancient world.

The same period also coincided with the development of mining tools of hardened iron, highly efficient methods of reduction of silver bearing ores,⁽¹⁵⁾ and the growth of an adequate supply of slave labor from various sources and due to the above mentioned depredations of the Assyrian etc.; all of which was so necessary towards profitable mining operations at that time. It may not unreasonably be supposed that this central point was still in the cities of lower Mesopotamia, such as Babylon, Ur, Lagash, Uruk etc.

 

From this area the merchant houses would have continued to have spread their operations around the world ⁽¹⁶⁾ in the same way, as, it is recorded, had been done from Ur as much as fifteen hundred years before during the so-called III^rd Dynasty;⁽¹⁷⁾ or for that matter during the period of seeming glory and empire that so often follows the accession to power of private money creative force in any organized and potentially vigorous state.

 

A most outstanding instance of the latter in modern times exists in the period of empire that came to Britain following the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694 A.D.⁽¹⁸⁾

The silver which the international bankers drew from Greece etc. at a ratio of 10:1 or more, would have been used in settlement of trade balances with India, Bactria, or China, at a ratio of 6:1 or less, as to gold. According to Alexander del Mar, this movement of silver to the Orient from Athens, was arranged by the Athenian Government;⁽¹⁹⁾ but except this early Athenian Government was fronting for the bankers, this could not have been so.

 

International trade balances have always been settled from the world's banking capital or headquarters of the international bankers or bullion brokers, such as was London during the last three centuries until very recently. In the days of which we write, this world banking capital was still located in Babylon city, it may reasonably be assumed.

The money of the cities of lower Mesopotamia and the whole Near East for that matter, had been based for a long time on the international valuation of silver by weight, and therefore these cities had long ago sought to obtain control of all sources of supply of such silver. As far back as 2470 B.C., King Manishtusu of Akkad invaded Southern Persia with no purpose other than gaining control of its silver mines.⁽²⁰⁾

 

When the rapid expansion of mining, as mentioned above, brought on to the markets of the world a relative deluge of silver and gold, the latter taking no mean second place, those groups controlling International finance from Babylonia, and possibly from Nineveh, decided no doubt to seek for further worlds to conquer, as it were.

The thing was to find a use for their surfeit of bullion, particularly silver, and of which metal they were now in a position to arrange extensive supplies to any banker who would be able to use such advantageously towards the promotion of their general worldwide plans. The growing commercial and industrial vigor of the Greeks showed them an answer to this problem... Thus the significance of the advent of the tyrants as promoters of heavy public spending of moneys based originally, on the silver standards of Babylonia, cannot be dismissed...

The policy of the bankers, for whom the tyrants fronted, would be to spread the main practice, at least their most profitable one, of private money creation, one way or the other. Using silver as base, they knew full well the tremendous possibilities that existed towards the creation of an abstract money whose equally efficient units cost them no more than entry by the slave scribe on the clay tablet that sufficed as his ledger.

 

Such policy spread, together with competition in manufacture, the need for that which the international bankers of that day, faceless as in this day, loaned against collateral as money. This money was based on the silver bullion they let it be known they were possessed of or held on deposit for their customers, be they individual, corporate body, or state.

It is reasonable to assume that there was little difference as between that first tangible money of private issuance in England as denoted by the goldsmiths receipts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ⁽²¹⁾ and the money as issued by the banks of the Greek cities. Its efficacy in the exchanges, although it was in reality no more than a highly organized system of counterfeit, derived from the total secrecy maintained by those involved in its issue.

 

Little clear information exists on this subject today as in ancient times and much of which, even if all the millions of tablets unearthed in Mesopotamia are ever translated and evaluated by scholars competent to do so, must remain as but faint outline...

One such faint outline of particular interest, though not deriving from the Mesopotamian tablets, is discernible in this information of Servius Tullius, slave king of early Rome:

"According to Charisius, Varro wrote: Nummum argenteum flatum primum a Servio Tullio dicunt, is IIII scripulis major fuit quam nunc." "It is said that silver money was first made by Servius Tullius and was IIII scripulis heavier than now." ⁽²²⁾

As it was Servius Tullius who ordered the establishment of the census at Rome that gave the basis for both taxation and military service, both essential organizations as to a state being taken over by international money power, the truth of this statement by Varro need not be questioned.

It is interesting to note in passing that although Servius Tullius was a usurper undoubtedly of slave origin, Livy carefully draws him in rather more favorable light than the Tarquins, particularly Superbus, the last of the line... By the time of Livy (59 B.C.-17 A.D.) the most powerful sector of the Roman population, the equites or knights, was taken over by wealthy freedmen and enfranchised foreigners ⁽²³⁾... Livy, when writing in that day under the threat of Lex Majestus ⁽²⁴⁾ would clearly have seen the value of finding and extolling true virtue in the character of the slave king, whether such virtue was there or not...

...However, if Servius actually did exist, and there seems to be a school of thought amongst the scholars that questions his existence, then it would be more likely as one who had raised himself up in a similar manner to Gyges of Lydia,⁽²⁵⁾ having at the same time a special backing by local money power; possibly in opposition to that money power emigrant from Corinth to Tarquinii in Etruria, which, according to Livy, was the Tarquin family.

The establishment of a silver standard as a base for monetary issuance might very well have been their reward for their assistance towards raising Servius to the throne.

 

The Census, supposedly established by Servius, while being the foundation of the organization of the whole state for defense or aggression, would give that money power a complete picture of the people it was their intention, one way or another, to exploit.

 

In the same manner the doomsday books of the Middle Ages, while recording for the reference of the king, all that in the kingdom was, also made valuable record for the money creative power, which had kings, nobles, ecclesiastics, and the common people, groaning under a burden of debt quite impossible to meet (which certainly was one of the main causes of the mood of the English that gave rise to Magna Carta, and of those events which followed until 1290 A.D. when the tax-collecting and money-lending classes, such as had followed the "Conqueror" across the English Channel, were finally evicted).⁽²⁶⁾

In a similar manner some 2500 years later, William III of England, owing his throne to the intrigues of the international bullion brokers at Amsterdam, granted them as reward that which they wanted more than anything on earth, which was the establishment of the legality of an undeterminable amount of abstract money, ledger credit page entry, or paper notes, to be based on their gold loans to the state, and the creation of a "Bank" at London from which they might issue this money known as "Credit" as loan against real collateral throughout the whole kingdom.

 

This bank was to be given the appearance of a state department. In this case such status was obtained by permitting it to be named:

"The Bank of England." ⁽²⁷⁾

Considering the above known instance of reward to international money powers for their services, far reaching in its consequences, and many other instances of which there is neither time nor place to write herewith, conjecture in respect to the establishment of a silver standard at Rome by Servius, may not be too far afield.

 

That Romans later rejected this standard as a base for their money, and the calamity and loss of sovereignty it brought them also is clear, for there is no further reference to silver money until that period when Rome was drifting towards the all-out struggle with Carthage: the year of the establishment of the board of Moneyers for the striking of bronze, silver and gold money (289 B.C.): tresviri aere argento auro flando feriurado;⁽²⁸⁾ thereby no doubt yielding to the importunities of the International Bullion brokers, with the ensuing outbreak of war thus being made a certainty.

One of the main purposes of those extensive public works which almost invariably followed the establishment of a tyranny, would be towards the establishment of some kind of National Debt, in which is, and was in that day too, most control and profit to those manipulating international finance. That there is no evidence of the existence of such state indebtedness in those days does not necessarily mean that such did not exist.

 

Excavation, or other methods, 2500 years from now would not reveal this indebtedness for instance in the case of England, so far as its relation to the Bank of England was concerned, for, unbelievable though it may seem, there is "remarkable absence of official records" for the first hundred years of the bank's existence! ⁽²⁹⁾

 

In the time of the tyrants, failure to keep books or records would be even more of a certainty.

Valuable by-products of their extensive public works programs would be:

1. The peasants would leave the land enticed by the money wages offered for work on these projects, and the pleasures and excitement that could be bought in the city with such money wages. There, once the construction boom was over, they formed a leaderless, hungry, and easily embittered "Proletariat".
    

2. The same "Proletariat" could be manipulated by the agents of Money Power as a mob, towards such political purposes as such Money Power might desire; including, besides removal of the natural nobility, removal of the so-called tyrant when his purpose was served.

Professor Ure, author of The Origins of Tyranny, ventures as close to the truth in respect to the meaning of a tyranny as any others who have written on the subject...

 

Although attributing the rise of the tyrants to Money Power he does not define what this Money Power may be; whether money creative power, or just those of considerable possession and treasure. In this omission he cannot be blamed.... Professor Ure for instance traces the source of the power of Peisistratus, Tyrant of Athens 561-527 B.C. according to Herodotus,⁽³⁰⁾ as being partly from those silver mines in the district in Thrace through which flows the Strymon river, and partly from the Laurion mines in Attica.

However, it must be pointed out that a man who apparently was a mining man and lived therefore within that restriction, would be unlikely to understand the finer shades of monetary emission. It seems quite reasonable to suppose that the class of persons hidden within the Aramaic speaking middle classes that permeated the whole Levant and Near East during the first Millennium B.C., and whose business was money and all that stemmed therefrom, in that they were interfering with that which clearly was a power to be exercised only by the very gods themselves, were scarcely likely to instruct their instrument, Peisistratus, therein...

 

Therefore, it may be concluded, the tyrant rose because he was the one who had found favor with the all-pervading money power of the day. He was not money power itself !

In that most of the great public works of the Greek cities had been carried forward by the tyrants is the evidence; for as the secretive money power of today, world-wide in scope, thrives primarily upon government loans directed to purposes of war and the enormous spending that wars involve in order to strengthen their outrageous claims against the nations, in ancient days similar heavy spending had to be devised. In that day, as previously pointed out, a great Acropolis or some other such magnificent public work with whose construction and financial organization Money Power was fully conversant, sufficed equally well with war; which, all said and done, with hardy aggressive peoples could also prove considerable danger to themselves, or their purposes.

So, with the tyrant, we see the force by which Greece, previously living in natural order, was molded to an instrument more suitable to those bankers: private money creative power, who, lurking in the shade as needs they had to, burned with rancor at the natural rulers who but treated them as stewards, although the essence of power for all that, lay in their hands for more than such rulers understood...

Thus were the simple and industrious and brave Greeks now raised up to be the new vehicle through which the final and destructive purposes of those controlling international bullion and slave trades would be achieved, as they shepherd the peoples of the world further down that road of no hope for themselves or the rest of mankind...



References

1. Ecclesiastes. Chapter 1, Verse 10; King James Version.

2. P.N. Ure, M.A.: The Origins of Tyranny; New York; 1922.

3. Ibid.

4. P.N. Ure: The Origins of Tyranny, P. 8; New York; 1922.

5. It was the custom in ancient times to bury hoarded wealth (tangible) beneath the floor of the house.

6. The Origins of Tyranny, P. 8, P.N. Ure, M.A., New York, 1922.

7. Hence the situation at Athens so similar to the situation in the Anglo-Saxon world today. Athens at that stage of the Peloponnesian War was undoubtedly completely under the political control of the banks (or trapezitae). It was not long after the battle of Aegospotami, 405 B.C., in which Lysander of Sparta destroyed the whole Athenian fleet as it lay drawn up on the beach, that the war ended with the usual results of such "Great" wars in so called "democratic" states, and with Athens completely dependent on privately created money for its finances, that is, on the International Bankers, and with such types of persons suitable to them and their plans for the future, occupying key positions. The victor, Sparta, was equally dependent on their good will, as a result of those concessions undoubtedly made at the Treaty of Miletus, 412 B.C. in order to obtain money such as was desirable internationally, and with which could be purchased the ships so necessary to defeat Athens, and without which the war could not have been brought to definite conclusion.

8. The Frogs of Aristophanes, lines 717 to 733, trans. by B.B. Rogers (with slight variations). (Page 138, Greek Coins, Charles Seltsman, M.A., London, 1933.)

9. In exactly the same way as Lenin, Dictator (or Tyrant) of Russia 1917-1922 was supposed to be drawn from the Nobility, or as Mao-Tse-Tung, at a later date dictator in China, was supposed to have derived from a similar class in China.

10. The following letter circularized amongst American Bankers by European Banking interests during the American civil war gives a most revealing light on this subject. There is no reason to suppose that the motives of the trapezitae of the Greek city states were in any way more altruistic:

"Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are in favor of, for slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages..."

This letter, known as the Hazard Circular, is to be found on Pages 44-45 in The Money Manipulators by June Grem.

11. Ure: The Origins of Tyranny, P. 15.

12. Ibid. P. 14.

13. Ibid. P. 59.

14. Ibid. P. 46.

15. A. Del Mar: A History of the Precious Metals, pp. 47-51.

16. Cambridge Ancient History, P. 392, Vol. I.

17. Sir Charles Woolley: Abraham, P. 121-126.

18. A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England. Also see Tragedy and Hope, by Dr. Quigley.

19. A. del Mar: The Halcyon Age of Greece, P. 5.

There also were to be found outlying places in the Orient where the ratio of gold to silver went as low as l:1 during the 1st Millennium B.C., remaining so until a very late date, in certain instances. It is reported by Sir Henry J. Reid, who wrote during the 19th Century, in his book Japan (Chapter XVIII), that the ratio of silver to gold, governing the use of the precious metals in settlement of trade balances, was still 1:1 in Japan during the 17th Century A.D.; long after contact with Europeans. The advantage the European bullion brokers took of this situation with its resultant disturbance to the status quo, was one of the main factors leading up to the almost total expulsion of Europeans from Japan during the period 1624 A.D. - 1853 A.D.

20. Sir Charles Woolley: Abraham, P. 122.

21. A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, pp. 22-26.

22. Theodore Mommsen & Joachim Marquardt: Manuel des Antiquités Romaines, P. 12, Tome IX; De l'Organisation Financière chez les Romaines, Paris, 1888.

23. Ibid. P. 68.

24. In its origins in 100 B.C., Lex Majestus (lex appuleia de maiestate imminuta) was an extension of the definition of treason as being internal revolt, to include any act impairing the "Majesty" of the Roman people. By the time of the early Empire, this law had been extended to cover almost any word or deed against the Emperor, and, it may reasonably be assumed, those who guided his policies. Spies and informers were everywhere...

Of this period Tacitus wrote at the very beginning of the Annals:

"What has been transmitted to us concerning Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, cannot be received without great distrust."

He further wrote in "The Histories:

"... But when the battle of Actium had been fought and the interests of peace demanded the concentration of power in the hands of one man, this great line of classical historians came to an end. Truth suffered in more ways than one. To an understandable ignorance of policy, which now lay outside public control, was in due course added a passion for flattery or else a hatred for autocrats... Adulation bears the ugly taint of subservience, but malice gives the false impression of being independent..."

(The Histories; I.I.; Tr. K. Wellesley; London; 1964.)

25. It is to be noted that the seal to the establishment of Gyges on the throne of Candaules, otherwise known as Myrsilus last king of Hittite descent on the throne of Lydia, and who he had cuckolded and destroyed, apparently with the ready assistance of Candaules' wife, was the pronouncement of the Pythian Oracle (Herodotus, Book I). Clearly the Oracles would be one of the most important instruments of the international money creative power towards the furtherance of its purposes; and it would have sought, as much as possible, to keep them under its control.

26. John Richard Green: A Short History of the English Peoples, P. 205; London; 1936.

27. A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, P. 73; London; 1966.

28. R.A.G. Carson: Coins, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, P. 106.

29. A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, P. xxvii. In the words of H.S. Foxwell who wrote the preface to this work in giving the reasons why no adequate history of the Bank of England appears to have been written previous to Andreades:

"The first is the remarkable absence of official records in connection with the Bank, especially for the first century of its activity. It has often been observed that the English are peculiarly fortunate in this matter of records;... The Bank of England stands out as a striking exception to the rule. It never seems to have published any reports or even to have preserved its own minutes and accounts."

30. Herodotus: The Histories, Book I.

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