Banker captures king

Napoleon understood nothing of all this. Like everybody

else, he saw the results but not the causes, and, since these

results were so unspeakably bad, was filled with indignation.

Nor was indignation left without fuel or draught. Necker, as

has been said, had forced his way into the King's Treasury as a

representative of the debt system, owing allegiance only to that

system. It had been his business, before he became a minister,

to prevent the King from getting out of debt by adopting

Turgot's plans. To that end he had founded, in Paris, a number

of newspapers in which, side by side, were presented accounts

of the profligacy of the Court at Versailles and of the poverty

and wretchedness of France. The moral was Rousseau's moral

namely, that society must be reconstituted on a basis of

Liberty and Equality. The basis actually aimed at namely,

debt was not, of course, disclosed, and so few people guessed

that what was really intended was the capture of the French

monarchy by the financiers in the manner in which the English

monarchy had already been captured.

https://archive.org/stream/napoleontheportr015065mbp/napoleontheportr015065mbp_djvu.txt 

Mirabeau did not 
wish to see the international bankers possess themselves of these 
lands in exchange for an overdraft. " Credit money," he 
declared, "is a theft or a loan collected, sword in hand."

The coalition against which he 
had dared to tilt was London's coalition, and he was fighting, 
not an enemy of flesh and blood, but a system established m 
every land and everywhere, England not excepted, exerting an 
iron despotism over trade and production and, through these, 
over government itself, 

... 

This last advantage outweighed all the others in the First 
Consul's mind, because he remained implacably determined to 
pursue his own economic policy namely : m 

''Agriculture, industry, and foreign trade. Agriculture is 
the soul, the foundation of the kingdom; industry ministers to 
the comfort and happiness of the population, Foreign trade is 
the superabundance; it allows of the due exchange of the surplus 
of agriculture and industry. . . . Foreign trade, which in its 
results is infinitely inferior to agriculture, was an object of 
secondary importance in my mind, Foreign trade ought to be 
the servant of agriculture and home industry; these last ought 
never to be subordinated to foreign trade." 

This economic system threatened the possessions of no other 
nation, but constituted, as Napoleon knew, a deadly danger to 
the debt system of London, for the reason that, when home 
trade is allowed to expand to ks full extent, producers of goods, 
being assured of their markets, get out of debt and are enabled, 
in consequence, to sell their surplus products more cheaply than 
producers in other countries who are carrying a burden of debt. 
Debt in such circumstances cannot be endured by any nation 
and must inevitably disappear from all nations. 

...

Meanwhile plans were discussed whereby French agriculture 
and French industry might be stimulated in every possible way. 
Napoleon was determined that his factories should constitute 
the market for his farms and his farms for his factories, and that 
these two should be protected against any influences tending to 
upset their interdependence. The system is as old as civilization 
and possesses an effectiveness in making those who adopt it 
prosperous which has been displayed again and again in human 
story, Essentially, it consists in equating consumption to pro- 
duction until the demand for home-made or home-grown goods 
has been fully satisfied. Such unwanted surpluses as may then 
exist are exchanged for foreign goods, of which the home 
supply is insufficient. Since the power to consume is the power 
to buy, it is obvious that the amount of money in the markets 
must be equal, at a given level of prices, to the amount of goods 
and must be kept equal, for if not consumption and production 
will at once get out of step with one another in the language 
of economics, prices will begin to fluctuate, rising when the 
amount of buying power exceeds the amount of goods on sale 
and falling when buying power is less than the amount of goods.  

...

The difference between Napoleon's system and the system of 
London resided, as has been indicated, in the attitude to the level 
of prices. The London bankers lived by preventing the equating 
of production and consumption. Production in England was 
stimulated while consumption was being restricted; 1 ^ prices, in 
consequence, tended to fall and to go on falling so that neither 
farmers nor industrialists could ever earn enough to cover the 
cost of new capital goods, and were forced to borrow con- 
tinuously from the banks, Most English farmers had to mort- 
gage their crops before they were planted, and most English 
manufacturers built and equipped their factories with debt. 
Wages were very small because, had they been allowed to rise, 
interests on the debts could not have been paid. The home 
market in consequence possessed little power of absorbing goods, 
which had to be disposed of at foreign markets.  

...

Inherent in his regulation of markets was his determination 
to be independent of London, whether in the matter of colonial 
produce or in that of tariffs. Nor, as his clear exposition shows, 
was he under any misapprehension. He knew that it was the 
monopoly of money, supported by the monopoly of raw 
materials, that he was challenging, The enemy was not Eng- 
land at all but Lombard Street, the Debt System, which had 
defeated and replaced the debt-free system of mediaeval Europe, 
Christianity and leadership were the guarantees of the debt-free 
system just as speculative philosophy, party government, and 
a subsidized Press were the guarantee of the Debt System. 

Napoleon Imperator 

Nor was there anything hap- 
hazard in this conduct, for he knew that it was part of the 
System of London to give subsidies to noblemen so that they 
might resist their sovereigns and thus bring the government of 
States into the power of moneylenders.