The Constitution having never been signed by anybody; and there being no
other open, written, or authentic contract between any parties whatever,
by virtue of which the United States government, so called, is
maintained; and it being well known that none but male persons, of
twenty-one years of age and upwards, are allowed any voice in the
government; and it being also well known that a large number of these
adult persons seldom or never vote at all; and that all those who do
vote, do so secretly (by secret ballot), and in a way to prevent their
individual votes being known, either to the world, or even to each
other; and consequently in a way to make no one openly responsible for
the acts of their agents, or representatives,--all these things being
known, the questions arise: _Who_ compose the real governing power in
the country? Who are the men, _the responsible men_, who rob us of our
property? Restrain us of our liberty? Subject us to their arbitrary
dominion? And devastate our homes, and shoot us down by the hundreds of
thousands, if we resist? How shall we find these men? How shall we know
them from others? How shall we defend ourselves and our property against
them? Who, of our neighbors, are members of this secret band of robbers
and murderers? How can we know which are _their_ houses, that we may
burn or demolish them? Which _their_ property, that we may destroy it?
Which their persons, that we may kill them, and rid the world and
ourselves of such tyrants and monsters?
These are questions that must be answered, before men can be free;
before they can protect themselves against this secret band of robbers
and murderers, who now plunder, enslave, and destroy them.
The answer to these questions is, that only those who have the will and
the power to shoot down their fellow men, are the real rulers in this,
as in all other (so-called) civilized countries; for by no others will
civilized men be robbed, or enslaved.
Among savages, mere physical strength, on the part of one man, may
enable him to rob, enslave, or kill another man. Among barbarians, mere
physical strength, on the part of a body of men, disciplined, and acting
in concert, though with very little money or other wealth, may, under
some circumstances, enable them to rob, enslave, or kill another body of
men, as numerous, or perhaps even more numerous, than themselves. And
among both savages and barbarians, mere want may sometimes compel one
man to sell himself as a slave to another. But with (so-called)
civilized peoples, among whom knowledge, wealth, and the means of acting
in concert, have become diffused; and who have invented such weapons and
other means of defense as to render mere physical strength of less
importance; and by whom soldiers in any requisite number, and other
instrumentalities of war in any requisite amount, can always be had for
money, the question of war, and consequently the question of power, is
little else than a mere question of money. As a necessary consequence,
those who stand ready to furnish this money, are the real rulers. It is
so in Europe, and it is so in this country.
In Europe, the nominal rulers, the emperors and kings and parliaments,
are anything but the real rulers of their respective countries. They are
little or nothing else than mere tools, employed by the wealthy to rob,
enslave, and (if need be) murder those who have less wealth, or none at
all.
The Rothschilds, and that class of money-lenders of whom they are the
representatives and agents--men who never think of lending a shilling to
their next-door neighbors, for purposes of honest industry, unless upon
the most ample security, and at the highest rate of interest--stand
ready, at all times, to lend money in unlimited amounts to those robbers
and murderers, who call themselves governments, to be expended in
shooting down those who do not submit quietly to being robbed and
enslaved.
They lend their money in this manner, knowing that it is to be expended
in murdering their fellow men, for simply seeking their liberty and
their rights; knowing also that neither the interest nor the principal
will ever be paid, except as it will be extorted under terror of the
repetition of such murders as those for which the money lent is to be
expended.
These money-lenders, the Rothschilds, for example, say to themselves: If
we lend a hundred millions sterling to the queen and parliament of
England, it will enable them to murder twenty, fifty, or a hundred
thousand people in England, Ireland, or India; and the terror inspired
by such wholesale murder, will enable them to keep the whole people of
those countries in subjection for twenty, or perhaps fifty, years to
come; to control all their trade and industry; and to extort from them
large amounts of money, under the name of taxes; and from the wealth
thus extorted from them, they (the queen and parliament) can afford to
pay us a higher rate of interest for our money than we can get in any
other way. Or, if we lend this sum to the emperor of Austria, it will
enable him to murder so many of his people as to strike terror into the
rest, and thus enable him to keep them in subjection, and extort money
from them, for twenty or fifty years to come. And they say the same in
regard to the emperor of Russia, the king of Prussia, the emperor of
France, or any other ruler, so called, who, in their judgment, will be
able, by murdering a reasonable portion of his people, to keep the rest
in subjection, and extort money from them, for a long time to come, to
pay the interest and principal of the money lent him.
And why are these men so ready to lend money for murdering their fellow
men? Solely for this reason, viz., that such loans are considered better
investments than loans for purposes of honest industry. They pay higher
rates of interest; and it is less trouble to look after them. This is
the whole matter.
The question of making these loans is, with these lenders, a mere
question of pecuniary profit. They lend money to be expended in robbing,
enslaving, and murdering their fellow men, solely because, on the whole,
such loans pay better than any others. They are no respecters of
persons, no superstitious fools, that reverence monarchs. They care no
more for a king, or an emperor, than they do for a beggar, except as he
is a better customer, and can pay them better interest for their money.
If they doubt his ability to make his murders successful for maintaining
his power, and thus extorting money from his people in future, they
dismiss him as unceremoniously as they would dismiss any other hopeless
bankrupt, who should want to borrow money to save himself from open
insolvency.
When these great lenders of blood-money, like the Rothschilds, have
loaned vast sums in this way, for purposes of murder, to an emperor or a
king, they sell out the bonds taken by them, in small amounts, to
anybody, and everybody, who are disposed to buy them at satisfactory
prices, to hold as investments. They (the Rothschilds) thus soon get
back their money, with great profits; and are now ready to lend money in
the same way again to any other robber and murderer, called an emperor
or a king, who, they think, is likely to be successful in his robberies
and murders, and able to pay a good price for the money necessary to
carry them on.
This business of lending blood-money is one of the most thoroughly
sordid, cold-blooded, and criminal that was ever carried on, to any
considerable extent, amongst human beings. It is like lending money to
slave traders, or to common robbers and pirates, to be repaid out of
their plunder. And the men who loan money to governments, so called, for
the purpose of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their
people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen.
And they as much deserve to be hunted and killed (if they cannot
otherwise be got rid of) as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that
ever lived.
When these emperors and kings, so-called, have obtained their loans,
they proceed to hire and train immense numbers of professional
murderers, called soldiers, and employ them in shooting down all who
resist their demands for money. In fact, most of them keep large bodies
of these murderers constantly in their service, as their only means of
enforcing their extortions. There are now, I think, four or five
millions of these professional murderers constantly employed by the
so-called sovereigns of Europe. The enslaved people are, of course,
forced to support and pay all these murderers, as well as to submit to
all the other extortions which these murderers are employed to enforce.
It is only in this way that most of the so-called governments of Europe
are maintained. These so-called governments are in reality only great
bands of robbers and murderers, organized, disciplined, and constantly
on the alert. And the so-called sovereigns, in these different
governments, are simply the heads, or chiefs, of different bands of
robbers and murderers. And these heads or chiefs are dependent upon the
lenders of blood-money for the means to carry on their robberies and
murders. They could not sustain themselves a moment but for the loans
made to them by these blood-money loan-mongers. And their first care is
to maintain their credit with them; for they know their end is come, the
instant their credit with them fails. Consequently the first proceeds of
their extortions are scrupulously applied to the payment of the interest
on their loans.
In addition to paying the interest on their bonds, they perhaps grant to
the holders of them great monopolies in banking, like the Banks of
England, of France, and of Vienna; with the agreement that these banks
shall furnish money whenever, in sudden emergencies, it may be necessary
to shoot down more of their people. Perhaps also, by means of tariffs on
competing imports, they give great monopolies to certain branches of
industry, in which these lenders of blood-money are engaged. They also,
by unequal taxation, exempt wholly or partially the property of these
loan-mongers, and throw corresponding burdens upon those who are too
poor and weak to resist.
Thus it is evident that all these men, who call themselves by the
high-sounding names of Emperors, Kings, Sovereigns, Monarchs, Most
Christian Majesties, Most Catholic Majesties, High Mightinesses, Most
Serene and Potent Princes, and the like, and who claim to rule "by the
grace of God," by "Divine Right"--that is, by special authority from
Heaven--are intrinsically not only the merest miscreants and wretches,
engaged solely in plundering, enslaving, and murdering their fellow men,
but that they are also the merest hangers on, the servile, obsequious,
fawning dependents and tools of these blood-money loan-mongers, on whom
they rely for the means to carry on their crimes. These loan-mongers,
like the Rothschilds, laugh in their sleeves, and say to themselves:
These despicable creatures, who call themselves emperors, and kings, and
majesties, and most serene and potent princes; who profess to wear
crowns, and sit on thrones; who deck themselves with ribbons, and
feathers, and jewels; and surround themselves with hired flatterers and
lickspittles; and whom we suffer to strut around, and palm themselves
off, upon fools and slaves, as sovereigns and lawgivers specially
appointed by Almighty God; and to hold themselves out as the sole
fountains of honors, and dignities, and wealth, and power--all these
miscreants and imposters know that we make them, and use them; that in
us they live, move, and have their being; that we require them (as the
price of their positions) to take upon themselves all the labor, all the
danger, and all the odium of all the crimes they commit for our profit;
and that we will unmake them, strip them of their gewgaws, and send them
out into the world as beggars, or give them over to the vengeance of the
people they have enslaved, the moment they refuse to commit any crime we
require of them, or to pay over to us such share of the proceeds of
their robberies as we see fit to demand.