Section XIX

0:00section 19 now what is true in Europe is substantially true in this country the difference is the immaterial one that in this country there is no visible permanent head or chief of these robbers and murderers who call themselves the government that is to say there is no one man who calls himself the state or even Emperor King or sovereign no one who claims that he and his children rule by the Grace of God, by Divine Right, or by Special Appointment from Heaven. There are only certain men who call themselves Presidents, Senators, and Representatives, and claim to be the authorized agents for the time being, or for certain short periods of all the people of the United States, but who can show no credentials or powers of attorney, or any other open, authentic evidence that they are so, and who notoriously are not so, But are really only the agents of a secret band of robbers and murderers, whom they themselves do not know, and have no means of knowing individually.

1:02But who they trust will open, or secretly, when the crisis comes, sustain them in all their usurpations and crimes. What is important to be noticed is that these so-called presidents, senators and representatives, these pretended agents of all the people of the United States, the moment their exactions The people themselves are obliged, like their co-robbers and murderers in Europe, to fly at once to the lenders of blood-money for the means to sustain their power, and they borrow their money on the same principle and for the same purpose, that is, to be expended in shooting down all those people of the United States, their own constituents and principals as they profess to call them, who resist the robberies and enslavement which these borrowers of money And they expect to repay the loans, if at all, only from the proceeds of the future robberies, which they anticipate it will be easy for them and their successors to perpetrate through a long series of years upon their pretended principles, if they can but shoot down now some hundreds of thousands of them and thus strike terror into the rest.

2:10Perhaps the facts were never made more evident in any country on the globe than in our own, that these soulless blood-money loan-mongers are the real rulers, that they rule from the most sordid and mercenary motives, that the ostensible government, the presidents, senators and representatives so called, are merely their tools, and that no ideas of or regard for justice or liberty had anything to do with inducing them to lend their money for the war. In proof of all this, Look at the following facts. Nearly a hundred years ago, we professed to get rid of all that religious superstition inculcated by a servile and corrupt priesthood in Europe, that rulers so-called derived their authority directly from Heaven, and that it was consequently a religious duty on the part of the people to obey them.

3:01We professed long ago to have learned that governments could rightfully exist only by by the Free Will and on the voluntary support of those who might choose to sustain them. We all professed to have known long ago that the only legitimate objects of government were the maintenance of liberty and justice equally for all. And this we had professed for nearly a hundred years. And we professed to look with pity and contempt upon those ignorant superstitious and enslaved peoples of Europe who were so easily kept in subjection by the frauds and force of priests and kings. Notwithstanding all this that we had learned and known and professed for nearly a century, these lenders of blood money had, for a long series of years previous to the war, been the willing accomplices of the slaveholders in perverting the government from the purposes of liberty and justice to the greatest of crimes.

3:53They had been such accomplices for a purely pecuniary consideration, to wit, a control of the markets in the South. In other words, the privilege of holding the slaveholders themselves in industrial and commercial subjection to the manufacturers and merchants of the North, who afterwards furnished the money for the war. And these northern merchants and manufacturers, these lenders of blood money, were willing to continue to be the accomplices of the slaveholders in the future, for the same pecuniary consideration. But the slaveholders, either doubting the fidelity of their northern allies, or feeling

4:59Any love of liberty or justice were the motives on which the money for the war was lent by the North. In short, the North said to the slaveholders, If you will not pay us our price, give us control of your markets. For our assistance against your slaves, we will secure the same price, keep control of your markets, by helping your slaves against you, and using them as our tools for maintaining dominion over you. For the control of your markets we will have, whether the tools we use for that purpose be black or white, and be the cost in blood and money what it may. On this principle, and from this motive, and not from any love of liberty or justice, the money was lent in enormous amounts, and at enormous rates of interest.

5:44And it was only by means of these loans that the objects of war were accomplished. And now these lenders of blood money demand their pay, and the government, so called, becomes their tool, their servile, slavish, villainous tool, to extort from the labor of the enslaved people both of the North and the South. It is to be extorted by every form of direct and indirect and unequal taxation. Not only the nominal debt and interest, enormous, as the latter was, are to be paid in full, but these holders of the debt are to be paid still further, and perhaps doubly, triply, are quadruply paid by such tariffs on imports as will enable our home manufacturers to realize enormous prices for their commodities, also by such monopolies in banking as will enable them to keep control of, and thus enslave and plunder, the industry and trade of the great body of the northern people themselves.

6:40In short, the industrial and commercial slavery of the great body of the people, north and in the South, black and white, is the price which these lenders of blood money demand and insist upon and are determined to secure and return for the money lent for the war. This program, having been fully arranged and systematized, they put their sword into the hands of the chief murderer of the war and charge him to carry their schemes into effect. And now he, speaking as their organ, says, Let us have peace. The meaning of this is, submit quietly to all the robbery and slavery we have arranged for you and you can have peace. But in case you resist, the same lenders of blood money who furnished the means to subdue the South will furnish the means again to subdue you.

7:28These are the terms on which alone this government, or with few exceptions, any other, ever gives peace to its people. The whole affair on the part of those who furnished the money has been, and now is, A deliberate scheme of robbery and murder, not merely to monopolize the markets of the South, but also to monopolize the currency, and thus control the industry and trade, and thus plunder and enslave the laborers of both North and South. And Congress and the President are today the merest tools for these purposes. They are obliged to be, for they know that their own power, as rulers so called, is at They are like a bankrupt in the hands of an extortioner.

8:14They dare not say nay to any demand made upon them, and to hide at once, if possible, both their servility and their crimes, they attempt to divert public attention by crying out that they have abolished slavery, that they have saved the country, that they have preserved our glorious union, and that in now paying the national debt, as they call it, as if If the people themselves, all of them who are to be taxed for its payment, had really involuntarily joined in contracting it, they are simply maintaining the national honor. By maintaining the national honor, they mean simply that they themselves, open robbers and murderers, assume to be the nation and will keep faith with those who lend them the money necessary to enable them to crush the great body of the people under their feet, will faithfully appropriate from the proceeds of their future robberies and murders enough to pay all their loans principle and interest.

9:11The pretense that the abolition of slavery was either a motive or justification for the war is a fraud of the same character with that of maintaining the national honor. Who but such usurpers, robbers and murderers as they ever established slavery? For what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not for many love of liberty in general, not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only as a war measure, and because they wanted his assistance and that of his friends in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial and industrial slavery to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both white and black.

10:02And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man, although that was not the motive of the war, as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery for which they were fighting to perpetuate and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before. There was no difference of principle but only of degree between the slavery they boast they have abolished and the slavery they were fighting to preserve. For all restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery and differ from each other only in degree. If their object had really been to abolish slavery or maintain liberty or justice generally, They had only to say, all whether white or black, who want the protection of this government shall have it, and all who do not want it will be left in peace so long as they leave us in peace.

11:02Had they said this, slavery would necessarily have been abolished at once. The war would have been saved, and a thousand times nobler union than we have ever had would have been the result. It would have been a voluntary union of free men, such a union as will one day exist among all men the world over, if the several nations, so called, shall ever get rid of the usurpers, robbers and murderers called governments that now plunder and slave and destroy them. Still another of the frauds of these men is that they are now establishing, and that the war was designed to establish, a government of consent. The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent is this, that it is one to which everybody must consent or be shot.

11:51This idea was the dominant one on which the war was carried on, and it is the dominant one now that we have got what is called peace. Their pretenses that they have saved the country and preserved our glorious union are frauds like all the rest of their pretenses. By them they mean simply that they have subjugated and maintained their power over an unwilling people. This they call saving the country, as if an enslaved and subjugated people, or as if any people kept in subjection by the sword, as it is intended that all of us shall be hereafter, could be said to have any country. This too they call preserving our glorious union, as if there could be said to be any The Theory of Money and Credit

13:03As long as mankind continue to pay national debts, so called, that is, so long as they are such dupes and cowards as to pay for being cheated, plundered, enslaved and murdered, So long there will be enough to lend the money for those purposes, and with that money a plenty of tools called soldiers can be hired to keep them in subjection. But when they refuse any longer to pay for being thus cheated, plundered, enslaved and murdered, they will cease to have cheats and usurpers and robbers and murderers and blood-money Money Loanmongers for Masters