UNDER the Feudal System, the King as God's steward remained in tenancy of all the land over which he ruled and land could not be alienated from his tenancy. He appointed men, ennobled by himself, to administer his land that is to say, to promote and protect production so that each of his subjects might be enabled to perform his duty to God and to his fellows ; at the same time he appointed Bishops to secure to his subjects the necessary knowledge of God and the benefits of religion.
Private property in land, in the sense in which that term is understood today, did not and could not exist. While a man might dispose freely of his crops and products he could not dispose of his land. Individual enterprise, in other words, was looked upon as the most productive and effective and for this reason encouraged ; the land was God's possession invested in the sacred person of the King by God for the benefit of men.The King was responsible to God for the use of the land, which was the essential basis of men's power to serve God and enjoy Him, and to make provision for themselves and their families.
Side by side with the prohibition to alienate land stood the prohibition to alienate the King's that is to say, God's money. The use of money, in Feudal times, was to serve as a means of distributing products and so ensuring their consumption. It was held that the power of the issue of money was scarcely less important than the ownership of land, and ought therefore to be withheld from private hands which might conceivably apply it to their own uses.
As has been said, the goldsmiths, at a comparatively early date, set themselves up in business by clipping, melting, and exporting the King's money, and so discovered for themselves the powers which can be wielded by anyone who is able to increase or diminish the quantity of money in a country. As time went on the system of credit largely replaced that of currency, but the methods of the bankers remained substantially the same.They managed to secure as a right what they had formerly secured by stealth, and became, therefore, entitled to create money and to abstract it at their pleasure. This gave them the further right to make the King himself and all his subjects pay them in goods and services for the money thus created. Consequently the chief powers of the Crown were transferred to them and they assumed a virtual control of the kingdom and all its riches, and speedily brought the God-system to an end. At the present time the King must go to the financiers for money, must incur a debt for the money he receives, and must pay such interest as the financiers choose to charge him. And what the King is compelled to do, every one of his subjects must do also. More extraordinary still, the Money power, as has been seen, persuaded Parliament to enact that that form of money still deriving ostensibly from the King namely, the currency should be subject rigidly to the movements of gold, so that his Majesty might be severely restricted in any financial operation he might dare to initiate of himself, whereas the form deriving from itself namely, loans (credit) should be left free of restrictions other than those which it might choose itself to impose. The "game of the gold-standard" to use the bankers' phrase served primarily the purpose of preventing the King from performing his most ancient and most undoubted duty to God and to his people. He was tied to gold by men whose chief fear it was that he might do that which it has ever been his office to do namely, supply his subjects directly with the means of exchanging their goods ; that is to say, with the means of living. By basing its own money (issues of credit) upon gold, in the ratio of £10 credit to 1 currency, the Money power secured further, as has been seen, that the effect of every movement of gold into or out of the country would be intensified tenfold. The King could not therefore use his own currency to make purchases outside of his realm without instantly bringing about a severe reduction in the means of exchange of his people and so a fall in prices. For that reason increased importation of goods in time of scarcity led necessarily, when the goods were paid for in gold, to decreased production at home as a consequence of the resulting fall in prices. In other words, it was no longer open to the King to relieve his people in their want or conversely to help them to exchange their superabundance.
It cannot be realized too clearly that the defence of the Money power is based on the assumption that it has the right to create credit and (having produced it by an entry in a ledger) to lend it at interest that is to say, to exchange it for goods and services. If this right is granted it follows, of course, that, if the created money (credit) is being employed unprofitably, the loan will be called in. But the title of the Money power to create money out of nothing and exchange it for goods and services is exactly what is in dispute though legally, of course, the right exists. There is no essential difference between this claim and a claim to be entitled to increase the number of the King's coins by minting them. In both instances what has cost nothing is traded for real goods, seeing that book entries of credit are costless and that consumable goods are costly. It may not be literally true that banks are private mints ; it is true that their creations of credit money out of nothing have the same effect as private mints would have. Thus it would seem that the English people has lost immeasurably by the change which took power from the King and gave it to the Parliament. Parliament today borrows humbly from Finance what belongs only to God, King, and people.
It was, as has been said, one of Napoleon's beliefs that men have found no answer to usury except a King by God's Grace. The history of England in the Nineteenth Century goes a long way towards confirming that view. England, by the special mercy of God, retained her Throne ; but she saw the Throne shorn of power in favour of the Parliament. Under her Kings England suffered many trials ; but, upon the witness of all unprejudiced observers, her case was better then, in days of scarcity and limited production, than it is now, when productive power has reached its present overwhelming proportions. Where was poverty like the poverty of the great industrial towns of England when Disraeli and Chamberlain dared to challenge the rule of Mammon and when, by efforts that ought for ever to bind this race to its Royal House, Queen Victoria raised high the ideal of duty in the hearts of her people?
Parliament failed England by delivering her over to "Dutch finance," and by that failure made it clear that Liberalism is impotent except in a Monarchy where the King is possessed of real power. It was not the Government but King Edward who took the first vital steps to bring England and France together in those days when the fate of this country depended upon that alliance. Parliament has not known how to abolish abject poverty in the middle of overflowing plenty, how to refute the doctrine of gain, how to curb the insolence of Money, how to save agriculture and industry from the intolerable burden of usury. But it may be that the fault does not rest with Parliament, but rather with those who supposed that such an instrument can discharge the office of the King, failing to understand that it is the Grace of God, by which he reigns, that arms the King against the power of Money by arming him against the greed and the fear on which that power is founded. That British Governments and Parliaments are actuated by the highest motives and composed of men and women whose sole aim it is to do service to their fellows is, of course, beyond dispute. It is not the men but the system that is at fault. This applies also to bankers. As has been said, faith in God has given place to faith in gold so that gold has become a god. Even the Money power itself probably believes to some extent in the virtue, as opposed to the profitable nature, of its commodity.