IT cannot be repeated too often that the reason why it was a criminal offence, before 1819, to export the King's money was that, when money leaves a country, no matter in what fashion, prices in that country fall. (This, as has been seen, is true today, although any Central Bank can prevent a fall of prices if it chooses to do so.)
By acquiring the power to export gold, therefore, its owners acquired the right to change the level of price of goods both in the country from which the gold was taken and in the country into which they chose to send it.
Generally speaking, they were guided by the simple rule that money must be removed at once from any country in which its safety or its power of earning a high rate of interest is threatened. High prices, as has been said, are an indication for the removal of money. On the other hand, social unrest, occasioned by very low prices, may also be an occasion, since, in the absence of a strong Government, it may lead to revolution and the repudiation of debt.
These considerations, as Disraeli saw, bear no relationship either to human welfare or to the power of producing goods. The Money power has acquired the right of creating demand and also of abolishing it at its pleasure, and so, in effect, has set itself in the place of humanity as well as in the place of Kings. When it wills that production shall take place it expands credit ; when it wills that production shall cease, credit is restricted. Thus boom and slump may be made to follow each other in endless succession.
These considerations were present to Disraeli's mind. He saw that a free British market was an essential part of the scheme of "Dutch finance," not only as enabling wages in England to be kept down, but also as securing a dumping-ground for goods sent in payment of the interest on foreign loans and for goods which the deflated markets of Germany and France and America were unable to absorb. The free British market was the corner-stone of the whole edifice of boom and slump, of the feverish stimulation of production and the equally violent sabotage of goods and plant which always followed, of the inflations and deflations, of the hopes and despairs, above all of the destruction of national life and national credit in that most precious of its forms, the spiritual and moral well-being of the people.
Why not cut adrift from this hideous system and make of England a separate economic unit ? Why not, by new Corn Laws, encourage the production of food at home and to keep upon the soil the matchless youth of England ? Why not take away from Money the power to change at its will the value of the Queen's currency ? Suddenly a larger vision broke upon the statesman's mind. He saw, instead of England, the British Empire, rescued at last from "Dutch finance"—one Throne, one nation, with its agriculture and its manufactures established on the old basis of need and set free, for ever, from the bondage of Finance.
This was not a Free Trade area which he beheld, but a Nation ; not an economic union, but a living organism. The British Empire should express the "God-thought" and the "King-thought"; it should find in the mystical power of the Throne its focus and its meaning. Then Money would return to its ancient servitude and be suffered no longer to usurp Crown and Sceptre. The leaders of agriculture and the leaders of industry would be the nobility of Empire, inspired by a lively sense of duty to their Sovereign and to their fellows, asking only the right to render a more excellent service.
The statesman unfolded his vision to the Queen and discovered that it was her vision also. For she, too, as has been said, grew sick at the spectacle of the bloody sacrifice of England which was being wrought. They entered into a fellowship of service, the first objects of which were to establish the Throne more firmly in the people's love, to awaken patriotism, and to re-make the nation, and to use this power ceaselessly to improve the lot of the workers so that, at every turn, the oppressor might find himself thwarted. Neither Queen nor statesman under-estimated the difficulties which lay ahead of them. For the moment the policy of the Money power was dominant and the doctrine of the Money power, in consequence, hard to refute. The whole world spoke and thought in terms of gain, of foreign investment, of exports, of favourable balances of trade, of cheapness, of the movements of gold, of credit facilities. Money was proclaimed as the "life-blood of industry." But already, in glutted markets and falling profits, the signs of a change were being revealed. The day could not be very far distant when men would turn in weariness and disillusion from a system which no longer offered any recompense for the loss of faith and hope and charity.