ABOVE the lamentations of a world in distress there have arisen, at frequent intervals during the last two years, the voices of statesmen assuring the world that its financial system is sound . If the exact meaning of this assurance has not always been grasped, bewilderment has not wholly detracted from comfort . For it is assumed, generally, that if the money is there recovery cannot be far away .
It is the purpose of this book to examine that faith from the historical point of view . I feel that I owe it to my reader to tell him that the conclusions reached are very different from those to which I expected to come . It was my personal belief, until a few years ago, that the Nineteenth Century marked the steady progress of mankind from a condition of feudal servitude to the liberty of ordered democratic states . I saw with satisfaction the gradual decline of the political influence of the Churches, the disappearance from many countries of the institution of monarchy, and the tendency, everywhere apparent, to reject the national and to exalt the international point of view . Kings, noblemen, and landowners, in my view, were, in their several degrees, obstacles to the progress of humanity towards the ideal of a commonwealth based upon mutual advantage on the one hand and upon science on the other .
As I am now aware, these opinions were founded upon a complete misunderstanding of the nature of Christianity and of the office of Money . But the misunderstanding went deeper than that and amounted to failure to realize the object of man's existence . So great has been the influence of Darwin on the generation to which I belong that their eyes have been blinded very often to those moral and spiritual values by which earlier generations were accustomed to measure all human affairs . The demonstration that greed and fear are the compelling influences of the animal kingdom has obscured frequently the fact that in human affairs another motive — namely, duty — has been continuously in operation . The philosophy of the Nineteenth Century was the philosophy of inducement, expressed in a gain-system which extended throughout the world and which was based on the belief that the weak must yield place to the strong, the unfit to the fit .
The fruits of this philosophy are now, everywhere, before us . The world today, in common knowledge, is richer in goods than at any earlier period ; it is so over-crowded with paupers that the spectacle of their miseries lies like a blight on every man's heart . At the same time every man goes in fear of discoveries which, by making production less onerous, will add to the number of the unemployed and so increase the sum of human distress . Again, the richer in all material blessing the world becomes the more necessary, apparently, it is that these blessings should be destroyed . The Dutch bulb-growers have recently burned a large part of their output . The Portuguese wine-growers have burned 10,000,000 gallons of port wine; the railways of Brazil are now using coffee-beans instead of coal as a means of raising steam; while the best advice which the Federal Farm Board was able to give to the cotton-growers of America was to plough up every third row of the shrubs already planted by them . Rats and mice are the chief beneficiaries of the application of science to the growing of cereals .
It is a matter which necessarily provokes surprise that, in circumstances of such superabundance, economy, as we are assured daily, should be necessary in every country, and that in a world flushed with good things the spectacle should be presented of starving families being bombed out of their hovels with tear-gas, of cuts being effected in the wages of workers, and of drastic curtailment in systems of health and education being demanded . Famine was all too frequent during the Middle Ages, but it is not recorded that, under the feudal system, men starved among plenty or willfully destroyed their handiwork .
It cannot, I think, escape observation that the gain-system is contemporary with the system of Parliamentary government . That fact alone seems to justify a study of Kingship . The idea of a Republic or Commonwealth seems to be wholly incompatible with any of those liberal ideals which are supposed to be brought nearer to realization by Republics . My study has convinced me that those human rights which I had not so much as dreamed of calling in question, cannot be asserted, in actual fact, without calamity . For such assertion opens the door wide to gain, and whether the gain be that of an individual, of a class, or of the whole people, the result is the same . Greed replaces service as the basis of action and of thought, and Money is soon enthroned . The gain-system is not lacking in humanitarian apologists, men and women whose sincerity — I speak for myself — is greater than their knowledge . These proceed from the idea of natural Human Right as enunciated by Rousseau . That they have not succeeded until now in avoiding the use of force and fear or in escaping the difficulty that greed multiplied by itself remains greed is a conspicuous lesson of history . It is untrue that humanitarianism in any of its forms bears more than a superficial resemblance to the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ . Christianity, indeed, recognizes no natural right of Man, but only the duty to love Got and our neighbours; it recognizes no natural possession of Man, but only a stewardship under God .
The literature of this subject is, of course, the most extensive in the world, ranging as it does from the Bible to the latest monograph on economic science . A life-long study of the French Revolution and of Napoleon's reign is the basis of the chapters dealing with these events, but I wish to make special mention of A King's Lessons in Statecraft, by Louis XIV, edited by Jean Longnon and translated by Herbert Wilson (Unwin) ; of The Life and Writings of Turgot, by Walker Stephens (Longmans); of The Assignats, by S.E. Harris (Harvard Economic Studies : Cambridge University Press) ; and Currency and Credit, by R.G. Hawtrey . These four books, though I disagree cordially with many of the opinions expressed in them, seem to me to be essential to a proper understanding of the nature and finances of the French Monarchy and of the French Revolution .
The state of Great Britain after the close of the Napoleonic Wars is best understood by reference to the files of The Times and to contemporary speeches, but I wish to acknowledge indebtedness to The Life of Robert Owen, by G.D.H. Cole (Macmillan) . I owe a debt also to A.E. Feavearyear for his excellent work The Pound Sterling (Oxford University Press) . The Reports of the Inspectors of Factories should be consulted for an account of industrial conditions, and a study ought to be made of Marx's Das Kapital . The speeches of Peel, Disraeli, and Chamberlain have been freely drawn upon, and also the writings of Disraeli and the Biography of Disraeli, by Buckle and Monypenny . Keynes' and Hawtrey's works afford great help in studying the more recent developments of currency and credit . The Stabilization of the Mark, by Dr. Schacht, even if the views expressed are not accepted, is a valuable book . It needs scarcely be added that the Macmillan Report (and its addenda) is indispensable to proper understanding of the existing situation . I wish in conclusion to acknowledge my debt to the late Lord Milner for his expression, The Money Power, and for his book, Question of the Hour, and to Major C.H. Douglas for his writings upon the monopoly of credit . My sincere thanks are due to my friend Douglas Woodruff for his most valuable help, to my friend W.F. Casey for his kindness in reading the proofs, to my friend Douglas Jerrold for his sympathy and understanding, and to my friend the Rev. Samuel Ford, Vicar of All Souls ; Loudoun Road, London, for the inspiration of his preaching .
R. McNair Wilson
London,
December 2, 1932 .