The Constitution having never been signed by anybody; and there being no other
open, written, or authentic contract between any parties whatever, by virtue
of which the United States government, so called, is maintained; and it being
well known that none but male persons, of twenty-one years of age and
upwards, are allowed any voice in the government; and it being also well
known that a large number of these adult persons seldom or never vote at all;
and that all those who do vote, do so secretly (by secret ballot), and in a
way to prevent their individual votes being known, either to the world, or
even to each other; and consequently in a way to make no one openly
responsible for the acts of their agents, or representatives, — all these
things being known, the questions arise: who compose the real governing
power in the country? Who are the men, the responsible men, who rob us
of
our property? Restrain us of our liberty? Subject us to their arbitrary
dominion? And devastate our hooms, and shoot us down by the hundreds of
thousands, if we resist? How shall we find these men? How shall we know
them from others? How shall we defend ourselves and our property against
them? Who, of our neighbors, are members of this secret band of robbers and
murderers? How
can we know which are
their houses, that we may burn or
demolish them? Which
their property, that we may destroy it? Which
their
persons, that we may kill them, and rid the world and ourselves of such
tyrants and monsters?
These are questions that must be answered, before men can be free; before they
can protect themselves against this secret band of robbers and murderers, who
now plunder, enslave, and destroy them.
The answer to these questions is, that only those who have the will and power
to shoot down their fellow men, are the real rulers in this, as in all other
(so-called) civilized countries; for by no others will civilized men be
robbed, or enslaved.
Among savages, mere physical strength, on the part of one man, may enable him
to rob, enslave, or kill another man. Among barbarians, mere physical
strength, on the part of a body of men, disciplined, and acting in concert,
though with very little money or other wealth, may, under some circumstances,
enable them to rob, enslave, or kill another body of men, as numerous, or
perhaps even more numerous, than themselves. And among both savages and
barbarians, mere want may sometimes compel one man to sell himself as a slave
to another. But with (so-called) civilized peoples, among whom knowledge,
wealth, and the means of acting in concert, have becom diffusede; and who have
invented such weapons and other means of defense as to render mere physical
strength of less importance; and by whom soldiers in any requisite number, and
other instrumentalities of war in any requisite amount, can always be had for
money, the question of war, and consequently the question of power, is little
else than a mere question of money. As a necessary consequence, those who
stand ready to furnish this money, are the real rulers. It is so in Europe,
and it is so in this country.
In Europe, the nominal rulers, the emperors and kings and parliaments, are
anything but the real rulers of their respective countries. They are little
or nothing else than mere tools,
employed by the wealthy to rob, enslave, and
(if need be) murder those who have less wealth, or none at all.
The Rosthchilds, and that class of money-lenders of whom they are the
representatives and agents — men who never think of lending a shilling to
their next-door neighbors, for purposes of honest industry, unless upon the
most ample security, and at the highest rate of interest — stand ready, at
all times, to lend money in unlimited amounts to those robbers and murderers,
who call themselves governments, to be expended in shooting down those who do
not submit quietly to being robbed and enslaved.
They lend their money in this manner, knowing that it is to be expended in
murdering their fellow men, for simply seeking their liberty and their rights;
knowing also that neither the interest nor the principal will ever be paid,
except as it will be extorted under terror of the repetition of such murders
as those for which the money lent is to be expended.
These money-lenders, the Rosthchilds, for example, say to themselves: If we
lend a hundred millions sterling to the queen and parliament of England, it
will enable them to murder twenty, fifty, or a hundred thousand people in
England, Ireland, or India; and the terror inspired by such wholesale
slaughter, will enable them to keep the whole people of those countries in
subjection for twenty, or perhaps fifty, years to come; to control all their
trade and industry; and to extort from them large amounts of money, under the
name of taxes; and from the wealth thus extorted from them, they (the queen
and parliament) can afford to pay us a higher rate of interest for our money
than we can get in any other way. Or, if we lend this sum to the emperor of
Austria, it will enable him to murder so many of his people as to strike
terror into the rest, and thus enable him to keep them in subjection, and
extort money from them, for twenty or fifty years to come. And they say the
same in regard to the emperor of Russia, the king of Prussia, the emperor of
France,
or any other ruler, so called, who, in their judgment, will be able,
by murdering a reasonable portion of his people, to keep the rest in
subjection, and extort money from them, for a long time to come, to pay the
interest and the principal of the money lent him.
And why are these men so ready to lend money for murdering their fellow men?
Soley for this reason, viz., that such loans are considered better investments
than loans for purposes of honest industry. They pay higher rates of
interest; and it is less trouble to look after them. This is the whole
matter.
[To be continued.]
The question of making these loans is, with these lenders, a mere question of
pecuniary profit. They lend money to be expended in robbing, enslaving, and
murdering their fellow men, solely because, on the whole, such loans pay
better than any others. They are no respecters of persons, no superstitious
fools, that reverence monarchs. They care no more for a king, or an emperor,
than they do for a beggar, except as he is a better customer, and can pay them
better interest for their money. If they doubt his ability to make his
murders successful for maintaining his power, and thus extorting money from
his people in future, they dismiss him unceremoniously as they would dismiss
any other hopeless bankrupt, who should want to borrow money to save himself
from open insolvency.
When these great lenders of blood-money, like the Rothschilds, have loaned
vast sums in this way, for purposes of murder, to an emperor or a king, they
sell out the bonds taken by them, in small amounts, to anybody, and everybody,
who are disposed to buy them at satisfactory prices, to hold as investments.
They (the Rothschilds) thus soon get back their money, with great profits; and
are now ready to lend money in the same way again to any other robber and
murderer, called an emperor or king, who, they think, is likely to be
successful in his robberies and murders, and able to pay a good price for the
money necessary to carry them on.
This business of lending blood-money is one of the most thoroughly sordid,
cold-blooded, and criminal that was ever carried on, to any considerable
extent, amongst human beings. It is like lending money to slave traders, or
to common robbers and pirates, to be repaid out of their plunder. And the
men who loan money to governments, so called, for the purpose of enabling the
latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people, are among the greatest
villains that the world has ever seen. And they as much deserve to be hunted
and killed (if they cannot otherwise be got rid of) as any slave traders,
robbers, or pirates that ever lived.
When these emperors and kings, so-called, have obtained their loans, they
proceed to hire and train immense numbers of professional murderers, called
soldiers, and employ them in shooting down all who resist their demands for
money. In fact, most of them keep large bodies of these murderers constantly
in their service, as their only means of enforcing their extortions. There
are now [1870], I think, four or five millions of these professional murderers
constantly employed by the so-called sovereigns of Europe. The enslaved
people are, of course, forced to support and pay all these murderers, as well
as to submit to all the other extortions which these murderers are employed
to enforce.
It is only in this way that most of the so-called governments of Europe are
maintained. These so-called governments are in reality only great bands of
robbers and murderers, organized, disciplined, and constantly on the alert.
And the so-called sovereigns, in these different governments, are simply the
heads, or chiefs, of different bands of robbers and murderers. And these
heads or chiefs are dependent upon the lenders of blood-money for the means
to carry on their robberies and murders. They could not sustain themselves
a moment but for the loans made to them by these blood-money loan-mongers.
And their first care is to maintain their credit with them; for they know
their end is come, the instant their credit with them fails. Consequently
the first proceeds of their extortions are scrupulously applied to the payment
of the interest on their loans.
In addition to paying the interest on their bonds, they perhaps grant to the
holders of them great monopolies in banking, like the Banks of England, of
France, and of Vienna; with the agreement that these banks shall furnish
money whenever, in sudden emergencies, it may be necessary to shoot down more
of their people. Perhaps also, by means of tariffs on competing imports,
they give great monopolies to certain branches of industry, in which these
lenders of blood-money are engaged. They also, by unequal taxation, exempt
wholly or partially the property of these loan-mongers, and throw corresponding
burdens upon those who are too poor and weak to resist.
Thus it is evident that all these men, who call themselves by the high-sounding
names of Emperors, Kings, Sovereigns, Monarchs, Most Christian Majesties,
Most Catholic Majesties, High Mightinesses, Most Serene and Potent Princes, and
the like, and who claim to rule "by the grace of God," by "Divine Right" —
that is, by special authority from Heaven — are intrinsically not only the
merest miscreants and wretches, engaged solely in plundering, enslaving, and
murdering their fellow men, but that they are also the merest hangers on, the
servile, obsequious, fawning dependents and tools of these blood-money
loan-mongers, on whom they rely for the means to carry on their crimes. These
loan-mongers, like the Rothschilds, laugh in their sleeves, and say to
themselves: These despicable creatures, who call themselves emperors, and
kings, and majesties, and most serene and potent princes; who profess to wear
crowns, and sit on thrones; who deck themselves with ribbons, and feathers,
and jewels; and surround themselves with hired flatterers and lickspittles;
and whom we suffer to strut around, and palm themselves off, upon fools and
slaves, as sovereigns and lawgivers specially appointed by Almighty God; and
to hold
themselves out as the sole fountains of honors, and dignities, and
wealth, and power — all these miscreants and imposters know that we make
them, and use them; that in us they live, move, and have their being; that
we require them (as the price of their positions) to take upon themselves all
the labor, all the danger, and all the odium of all the crimes they commit
for our profit; and that we will unmake them, strip them of their gewgaws,
and send them out into the world as beggars, or give them over to the
vengeance of the people they have enslaved, the moment they refuse to commit
any crime we require of them, or to pay over to us such share of the proceeds
of their robberies as we see fit to demand.