credit-money

Nor was this state of affairs the fault of authority. A change  of a fundamental kind had taken place in the economic  structure of Europe, whereby the basis of that economic  sructure had ceased to be wealth and had become debt. In the  old Europe wealth had been measured in land and in the  products of land, crops and herds and minerals ; but a new  standard had now been introduced namely, a form of money  to which the tide " credit " had been given. The Middle Ages   38     NAPOLEON, PHILOSOPHER   had covered Europe with cathedrals and noble secular buildings  and had left no debt; But during four centuries debt had been  increasing as the new credit-money, little by little, replaced the  old money, and it had now, because of the concentration of the  precious metals m London, achieved a virtual conquest of the  world. In other words, the promissory notes of London  banking houses had become, to all intents and purposes, the  only international money, seeing that nobody could obtain gold  or silver m any substantial amount without having recourse to  London.   Not only so, but London had become, after the Seven Years'  War, the centre of an Empire which included India and  Canada, Access to colonial produce was therefore barred to  nations which did not possess sterling credits. Nor was it easy  to obtain such credits by^ selling goods to England, because  JEnghsh manufacturers were protected by a tariff. France, there-  fore, had been forced to borrow in order to obtain colonial  produce; she had been forced to borrow in order to play her  part in the American War of Independence; she was now  being forced to borrow in order to pay the interest on her  former loans. And since ultimately, as has been said, all loans  were sterling loans, she had fallen more and more under the  dominance of London,

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