See part I.
PART II.
Draft version 6. (Significantly expanded with many new quotations in 29.3.2021)
1450’s- Corrupt Popes
After the Babylonian captivity had tamed the Popes the Jews started to support relatively Philo-Semitic Popes, bishops and cardinals. This became ever more important after the Spanish Inquisition run by Spanish kings started going after many Marranos and Jews and crypto-Jews. Many converted Jews (Marranos) were actually crypto-Jews who secretly practised Judaism and only married other ethnic Jews. Marranos were very wealthy and dominated the economy of the Spanish empire so naturally the Spanish were worried about their true loyalities.
The Borgias came from Spain to Rome and were very close to Jews and Marranos. It was rumored that Borgias were originally Jews. Also the ancestry of the Medici family has often been debated but the fact is that they too were very close to the Jews. In fact, the Italian Jews supported secular Renaissance humanists and helped the Medici family bring down the Catholic Savonarola. The fate of the Italian Jews literally rose and fell with the Medici and vice versa.
In the 1490s, under the Catholic theocracy of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, both the Medici and the Jews were expelled from Florentine territory. When the Medici returned to power in 1512, the Jewish ban fell into abeyance, until the next expulsion of the Medici in 1527. In 1537 Cosimo de’Medici seized definitive control of the Florentine government and reorganized it as a princely state–the Dukedom (later Grand Dukedom) of Tuscany. ..
By the mid-1540s, less than ten years after he gained the throne, Cosimo I began recruiting affluent Spanish and Portuguese Jews for resettlement in his capital city of Florence and his chief port city of Pisa. At the same time, many displaced Italian Jews who were neither bankers nor wealthy merchants came to Tuscany as well, particularly after the final expulsion of the Neapolitan community in 1540 and the creation of ghettos in the Papal cities of Rome and Ancona in 1555. (Jewish Virtual Library)
The Jewish support made it possible for the Borgias and the Medicis to take over the papacy and corrupt it. The notorious renaissance Popes came from the Borgia (Calixtus III, Alexander III) and Medici (Leo X, Clement VII) families or were largely controlled by them. Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici (Leo X) was not even a priest when he bought his way to papacy with the support of the Jews. It was during the reign of Borgia and Medici popes that the Vatican became notorious for orgies, homosexualism, use of poison and the sell of indulgences. Historians have often wondered why the Borgia and Medici popes did not try to end the abuses and reform the church. It’s almost like they didn’t care about Christianity. From the perspective of the Jews this had the additional benefit of helping create dissension within the church.
1500’s- Protestants against Catholics
Manipulating the papacy was not enough for the Jews because some new Pope could always turn against them. Therefore it was important to break the Christendom into pieces by supporting protestants such as the Philo-Semitic Martin Luther. With the support of the Jews many rulers adopted Lutheranism for the simple reason that they could become more independent from the Pope and the Emperor. Moreover they could also confiscate Church property.
Luther had to justify this by attacking the rationalist foundations of Scholastic Christianity with faith centered anti-rationalism and egalitarianism.
In ideological reaction to these “decadent” tendencies, which had also affected the mainstream Church, the Reformation brought a sharp return to religion. However, the new Protestant religiosity was decidedly reactionary: antirationalist and egalitarian. Faith, held to be the sole path to salvation, was viewed as the foundation of Christianity, whereas that “harlot reason,” as Luther called it, was held in contempt.
God’s will was considered unintelligible and irrational; the Augustinian doctrine of human predestination was revived; the fate of each person was held to be dependent upon the grace of God and His unfathomable decree. At the same time, the Bible was elevated to the rank of the highest religious authority, and the idea of a “universal priesthood,” based on everyone’s personal Bible reading and unmediated through the spiritual hierarchy of the Church, was promoted. …
As a result of antirationalism, the development of the sciences suffered, and literature and the arts declined. Even more momentous, however, were the effects of Protestant egalitarianism. Not only did it lead to the destruction of the unity of the Church, but without any recognizable spiritual ranks, that is, with the democratization of religious authority, the Protestant movement quickly disintegrated into numerous branches. Long submerged strands of early Christianity, such as Millenarianism, Anabaptism, and Communism, resurfaced. The proliferation of religious confessions, cults, and sects, incompatible with each another but each grounded in the Holy Scripture as the highest authority and hermetically shielded from all rational inquiry, promoted social disintegration, mutual hostility, and finally warfare on a scale and of a brutality unsurpassed in the West until the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.37 (Hans-Hermann Hoppe. The Great Fiction, p. 456)
Once Luther had made Protestant states strong and Philo-Semitic he thought that the Jews would convert. When Jews totally refused Luther realized that he had been used by them and wrote the famous book On Jews and Their Lies.
The Protestant critique of indulgences and other Church corruption also created a reform movement inside the Catholic Church. Perhaps not surprisingly it was precisely the fervently anti-Medici and anti-Jewish Supreme Inquisitor Antonio Chislieri (Saint Pius V) who finally cleaned the Church. He also organised the Catholic League, helped decisively defeat the Turks at Lepanto, expelled the Jews from Rome and burned the Talmud.
Now both the protestants and Catholics were very hostile towards the Jews. However, the Jews were not alarmed. They had won because the Christendom was now broken. The Jews could now play Catholics and Protestants against each other as they did in the religious wars. Furthermore, they also had new allies: Calvinists and various other Protestant sects became extremely Philo-Semitic.
After the Thirty Years War broke out in 1618, the Hapsburg emperor, Ferdinand II, turned to financier Joseph Bassevi of Prague to finance the war effort. Bassevi was allied with the most powerful figure at the imperial court. Prince Liechtenstein, and with General Wallenstein, commander of the imperial armies. In exchange for loans to finance the war. Emperor Ferdinand leased the imperial mint to Bassevi, Liechtenstein, and Wallenstein. The three men recouped their investment by debasing the coinage.
Bassevi also established a network through which to supply the imperial armies with food, fodder, arms, and ammunition. During and after the Thirty Years War, virtually all the major states in Central Europe and Scandinavia found it necessary to make use of the resources and talents of Jews to compete with their rivals. The Hohenzollern rulers of Prussia relied initially upon Israel Aaron and then upon the Gomperz family. The Behrends served the court of Hanover and the Lehmans Saxony, while the Fuersts served Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenberg, and Holstein-Gottorp. The Danish royal family employed the Goldschmidts, while Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden relied upon Jewish contractors to provision his army. (Fatal Embrace. p. 31)
1500’s- Kings against parliaments
With the break-up of the Church the kings became much more powerful. Protestant kings became also much more richer by simply robbing church property. The same started to gradually happen also in Catholic countries because the Popes needed the Catholic kings to stop the advance of Protestantism. The balance of power between the Pope, king and parliament was now broken. King’s started to become absolutist rulers especially since the religious wars gave them an excuse to raise taxes and ever larger armies.
The absolutist king soon seemed to have almost a total monopoly on state power. Louis XIV famously said that he was the state.
The monopoly on state power does not mean that the kings could just increase taxes and exploit the people at will. On the contrary. When kings became more powerful they also became more isolated. The Popes, parliaments and especially the people joined forces against the king. Whenever he tried to increase regulations and taxes there was massive passive resistance from all quarters. After all, the bureaucratic machinery was led by the aristocracy that often wanted to hinder king’s plans. The bureaucrats could also be easily bribed or otherwise pressured by merchants and localities to stop the enforcement of regulations. And even if the regulations were enforced by officials there were courts that could stop the regulations either outright or by finding various loopholes. But the biggest obstacle was the people who could always rebel or assassinate the king.
From the perspective of liberty absolutist monarchy made state personified and thus put a clear limit on the power of the state. The king was powerful but he was not a despot. The whole society ganged up against him to limit his power. He could not rule at will. All people from the highest aristocrat to the lowest commoner became very jealous of their own ancient rights and privileges. They would defend them against all encroachments of the kings.
Paradoxically monopoly on state power is less dangerous than a cartel on state power. In a political cartel various interest groups gang up against the people to regulate and tax them. They try to divide the people by offering some groups cartels, monopolies and subsidies while at the same time obfuscate with lies about general interest and how the parliament supposedly represents the people. In a monopoly there is one person – the king – against the whole people. Of course, the king can buy support and gradually create a powerful army of soldiers, bureaucrats and courtiers but it is still a small clique that is visibly separate from the people. It is much more difficult for the kings to cajole the people to give up their rights.
In economics cartels are better than monopolies because they allow trade and prices to function. This is why a cartel economy is better than a monopoly economy. However, in politics there are no trade and prices. Politics is exploitation where you enslave the other people with regulations or taxes. It is better to have a single monopoly exploitator than a cartel of many exploitators. In effect, the object of exploitation becomes a property of the exploitator. If the exploitator is a cartel then this easily creates the tragedy of the commons. Unlike the cartel the monopolist exploiter sees the object as a cow to be milked. He tries to avoid over-exploitation.
This also explains why absolutist monarchy tended to develop into enlightened absolutism. It was in the interest of the king to increase the property rights of the people in a manner that would increase his taxation revenue. Exploitation started to decrease when the king fully realized that he could increase his tax revenue without raising taxes or even by lowering taxes and especially regulations. The king could economically benefit by removing various monopolies and cartels.
All this does not mean that the rule of an absolutist kings was just. He was still an exploiter. But the monopoly on state power created a tendency to liberty. The monopoly not only visibly separated the state from the people but also institutionally freezed the state in a manner that let the society around it to develop in a more libertarian manner. The society started to avoid the state and grow around it. This is precisely what happened in 1700’s France during the absolutist kings. They maintained their power but they could not significantly increase regulations and taxes. The growth of the parasite was slower than the growth of the economy. We see this also in Russia where the Tsar was the absolutist ruler but the state was gradually isolated and grew relatively smaller compared to the economy. It was in the interest of the Tsar to gradually increase the liberties of the people.
Naturally the situation was not always clear cut. First, the absolutist kings were not really fully absolutist. Their power was not only limited by the ancient liberties of the people but also by the fact that they had to buy supporters. Often these supporters were court aristocracy, aggressive chauvinists, cartellistic merchants and over-payed army officers, state clergy and state bureaucrats. In other words, inefficient parasites who did everything in their power to not only increase the power of the king but also to stop him from decreasing regulations and taxes. But despite all this it was still in the long run interest of the king to increase the liberties of the people. And this is exactly what gradually happened in France and especially in Russia where absolutism ruled the longest.
Absolutist monarchy also supported the development of enlightenment in the sense that the state vs. people attitude created rationalist natural law doctrine.
The recognition of the supremacy and autonomy of reason and a renewed interest in the Stoic philosophy and late Scholasticism (Molina, Suarez, Mariana) led to the development of a new secular, purely rational natural rights doctrine centered on the notions of self-ownership, private property, and contract: to Althusius, Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke, Thomasius, and Wolff. The earthly ruler was seen as subject to the same universal and eternal principles of justice as everyone else, and a state either would derive its justification from a “contract” between private property owners or it could not be justified.40
There remained significant differences as regards the precise meaning of “contract” (Did it bind only the original signers? Could it be revoked?), but there can be little doubt that, under the growing ideological influence of the natural rights doctrine, the power of kings became increasingly constrained.41 (Hans-Hermann Hoppe. The Great Fiction, p. 457)
1550’s- The Dutch against The Spanish Empire
The Netherlands was the freest area of Europe because there was a balance of power between the Holy Roman Emperor, aristocrats and the town merchants. The people were left alone. Taxes and regulations were lower than anywhere in Europe. Already in the Middle Ages first Flanders and then the Netherlands was famous for low taxes. William the Good, the count of Netherlands had even executed tax collectors. Soon the Netherlands also became defender of the freedom of the seas.
William the Good of the Netherlands .. had the tax collector beheaded. A painting from one of the great Dutch masters of this execution can be found today in the city hall in Hasselt, Overijssel, in the Netherlands. …
The Netherlands was the center of world commerce; Amsterdam was the most important city in Europe. Freedom of the high seas was a Dutch legal invention designed to rid the North Sea of English tax collectors. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 144, 190.)
There is little doubt that it was the Jews who broke the balance of power that minimized the state in the Netherlands. They financed and helped Calvinists to convert the Dutch and rebel against the mighty Catholic Spanish Empire that had expelled Jews from Spain. Then Jews helped to turn a legitimate Dutch tax rebellion into an ideological war against Spain and the Church.
The Netherlands were part of the vast Spanish Empire … Alba summoned the Estate General of the Dutch people for authority to levy the “tenth penny” as the Dutch called the alcabala. The Dutch like the English, had no intention of granting the Spanish Crown the right to levy a permanent excise, which violated their ancient liberties. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 190.)
Netherlands became a Republic where the ruling elite was composed of the Dutch and Jewish merchants. Amsterdam became a safe-haven for Jews who helped turn the freest economy of Europe into a highly taxed cartel economy. Jews encouraged and partly financed the Dutch to wage continuous colonial wars against the “anti-Semitic” Spanish and Portuguese. The Dutch even tried to conquer Brazil. This aggressive foreign policy led to ever higher taxes.
The Dutch republic did not collapse; it declined, much like the British Empire, from the burdens of too much taxation, too much debt, and military expenditures beyond its capabilities. .. constant warfare put a drain on the economy; and taxes increased, prices soared, and Dutch goods price themselves out of foreign markets. Goods in Amsterdam cost twice as much as in London. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 266.)
Sir William Temple, an English diplomat in Holland, said, “When, in a tavern, a certain dish of fish is eaten with the usual sauce, about 30 several excises are paid”. The English were amazed at the heavy excises paid by their Dutch rivals. Even Dutch fishermen paid excises on the fish they put on their own tables. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 267.)
Jewish bankers probably also tried to persuade the Bank of Amsterdam to turn to fraudulent fractional reserve banking just like the Philo-Semitic banks of Florence had done. But this time they did not succeed.
[S]uccessful cartel for bank credit expansion occurred in Florence in the second half of the sixteenth century. There, the Ricci bank was the dominant bank among a half dozen or so others, and was able to lead a tight cartel of banks that took in and paid out each other’s receipts without bothering to redeem in specie. The result was a large expansion and an ensuing long-time bank crisis. …
It is likely that the establishment of the Bank of Amsterdam in 1609, followed by other 100 percent reserve banks in Europe, was a reaction against such bank credit-generated booms and busts as had occurred in Florence not many years earlier.
The Bank of Amsterdam, which kept faithfully to 100-percent reserve banking from its opening in 1609 until it yielded to the temptation of financing Dutch wars in the late eighteenth century, financed itself by requiring depositors to renew their notes at the end of, say, a year, and then charging a fee for the renewal. (Murray N. Rothbard. The Case Against the Fed. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1994. p. 54, 44.)
The Tulip Mania of the 1636 made the Dutch even more suspicious of new financial speculation schemes. Many Jews probably decided to try their luck also in England. After all, it was an emerging economic power that was challenging the Dutch. The Jews had not only to get piece of the action but get England on the side of the Dutch in the war against France’s Louis XIV. But first the Jews had to get permission to return to England.
1550’s- English parliament against the kings
After the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 the English kings and high aristocracy could never again become very powerful. Political centralization was stopped. The landed gentry and localities became ever more powerful. They checked not only the power of the kings but also the parliament. Even when the king and parliament together decided to raise taxes and regulations their enforcement was stopped by the people and their local representatives. England became a low tax country with little regulations. This despite the Hundred Year War with France and the War of The Roses civil war. The kings tried again and again to increase taxes but all attempts failed. Decentralization made England a low-tax country.
There early income tax laws had teeth, with fines and imprisonments, but English taxpayers and sheriffs conspired against them. In 1449 a gentleman named Cade organized a rebellion in Kent, which ended with the beheading of the king’s chief tax minister. .. Each tax district was obliged to pay a fixed amount to the treasury. There were no audits or appraisals. The same amount was paid by a family for generations. Assessments and collections were performed by local people. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 237-238.)
The religious wars in the 1500’s almost changed the situation when Henry VIII turned protestant and became richer by stealing Church property.
Henry seemed to be waiting for his excommunication. Parliament responded and proclaimed Henry supreme ruler of the church in England. This permitted him to execute the greatest heist of all time. Henry started selling monastic lands, and he redirected tithes and offerings to his coffers. With these lucrative revenues, new taxes were not needed. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 243.)
This extra income made the English kings more powerful but it was still only a one-shot increase in revenue. The kings did not became powerful enough to break the power of the aristocrats, localities and the merchants. This is why unlike in many other countries the battle between Protestants and Catholics might have even increased decentralization. Elisabeth I was afraid of rebellions and did not dare to increase taxes and regulations. In fact they became lower and lower.
If epithets were given to English monarchs, Elizabeth would surely be called “the Great”. The England she inherited was mediocre; the England she left was fast becoming a superpower and was to dominate the world for four hundred years. …
Even her tax policy was unprecedented. Never before nor since has a monarch behaved toward taxation the way she did – she decided to be loved by her subjects and accept what revenue they were willing to give her. .. her remarkable reign was highlighted by unbelievably low taxation for its time, with minimum of compulsion. …. Besides her unprecented low valuation/assessment policy, she even went so far as to eliminate the use of oaths for assessment by oaths of the assessors, so as the taxation of men’s values was voluntary without any inquisition by oath or other coercion. (p. 243.)
In England, liberty was equated with the absence of an excise tax in the same way that the ancient Greeks equated liberty with the absence of poll taxes and land taxes. The Venetian ambassador in London said that the absence of an excise in England was “singular and wonderful”. (p. 254.)
Elizabeth did not ask Parliament for money. If revenues were small – and they were – then her government would adjust to what Parliament provided. Her acceptance of meagre revenues did not end with Parliament; she made little effort to strictly enforce the tax laws and grants given to her. England under Elizabeth had by far the lowest taxes in Europe. (p. 243.)
Elisabeth would probably receive most of the votes in a selection of the greatest and most loved monarch Europe has ever known. She was the first in the postmedieval period to have proved much of the supply-side theory. She noted how taxes had impoverished France. She inherited a bankrupt monarchy and left it with a sizeable treasury, and she engaged in costly war. Yet she reduced tax valuations to extremely low levels – in effect reducing tax rates. (p. 244.)
To the surprise of historians at that time and in later years, “the solvency of her government has been held ‘the miracle of the age´”. Supply-siders would call this no miracle at all, just smart tax and spending management. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 245.)
The English state became ever weaker but there was still the conflict between Catholics and Protestants. In the Civil War (1642-51) the Jews supported the Calvinist style pro-Jewish Puritan protestants against the pro-Catholic Jacobite king Charles I. Predictably the king lost because he could not raise much taxes for a strong army while the supporters of parliament could raise ever more taxes. It was taxes that won the Civil War for the Parliament.
Charles left London and went north to raise an army to go to war against Parliament. In this vacuum of power Parliament took over the government, collected its own taxes, raised an army, and started England’s terrible Civil War. The new government was directed by the Puritan Oliver Cromwell, an extremely able leader and military commander.
His Long Parliament, as it was called, adopted number of new taxes. … the hated excise was adobted. There was a new wealth tax and even a weekly fast tax, based on the value of one meal a week. ..
The king could not compete with Parliament over taxes. He was defeated at Oxford and fled north to Scotland. With substantial revenues from new taxation, Parliament purchased the king from the Scots and brought him to London for trial and execution. (The Impact of Taxes. p. 254-255.)
The king lost the Civil War so thoroughly that it destroyed much of his state machinery.
Though never on the Continental scale, the Tudor and early Stuart monarchs had developed a centralised and fairly efficient administration. The counties might be ruled by the Justices of the Peace, and the towns by the municipal corporations – and both therefore by the leading local families. But these were in turn closely supervised by the Privy Council and the Councils of Wales and of the North. The Church was supervised by the High Commission, and the legal system by the Court of Star Chamber. Through these bodies, a mass of moral and economic regulation was imposed. Religious dissent was punished. Juries were intimidated. Monopolies and wage and price controls were enforced.
Then, in 1641, excepting the Privy Council, which was greatly weakened, the whole central administration was either abolished outright or made impotent. It had been alien to the Constitution. It had been used too extensively to usurp the authority of Parliament and the Common Law. It was not reconstituted after 1660, and the devolution of most government into local hands was quietly accepted. From then on, the only means of government were according to the Common Law or by Acts of Parliament made under the influence of the Common Law and interpreted and enforced by the courts of Common Law. …
The Common Law has never sought to prevent any stated end of government. It is the procedure of Common Law, with its requirement of due process and consistency between cases, that makes the ends to certain means impossible. There is no rule of Common Law that prevents a government from trying to regúlate prices. It simply prevents the sort of administrative supervision and discretion without which they cannot be regulated. It was because of these limitations that the Tudor Monarchs had bypassed the Common Law and relied instead on their Councils and Commissions. Without these, administration in the European sense was abolished. …
In Monmouthshire, innkeepers simply shut their doors in the faces of the excise men, who had no legal power to break doors open. In France, tax gatherers were little more restrained than a gang of thieves. In England, taxes were effectively limited to things like land and windows and foreign trade. The first two had the advantage of being assessable with minimum intrusion; and the few disputes that arose over assessment and collection could be reliably left to the courts. The third were paid either by foreigners or a small minority of the population. (Sean Gabb. p. 21, 22, 24)
When the power of the king and his statist machinery had been destroyed there emerged the first consciously libertarian movement, the Levellers led by John Lilburne. They made it clear that the parliament should not build its own state machinery since there was no need the state machinery in the first place. People could be free.
[The] world’s first self-consciously libertarian mass movement: the Levellers. In a series of notable debates within the Republican Army – notably between the Cromwellians and the Levellers – the Levellers, led by John Lilburne, Richard Overton and William Walwyn, worked out a remarkably consistent libertarian doctrine, upholding the rights of ’self-ownership’, private property, religious freedom for the individual, and minimal government interference in society. (Murray Rothbard. An Austrian Perspective, p. 313)
The hard-line Puritans led by the general Oliver Cromwell destroyed the Leveller movement. This was one of the watersheds of history.
In 1649, Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne, William Walwyn, Thomas Prince, and Richard Overton were imprisoned in the Tower of London by the Council of State (see above). It was while the leaders of the Levellers were being held in the Tower that they wrote an outline of the reforms the Levellers wanted, in a pamphlet entitled “An Agreement Of The Free People Of England” (written on 1 May 1649). It includes reforms that have since been made law in England, such as the right to silence, and others that have not been, such as an elected judiciary.[22]
Shortly afterwards, Cromwell attacked the “Banbury mutineers”, 400 troopers who supported the Levellers and who were commanded by Captain William Thompson.[23][24] Several mutineers were killed in the skirmish. Captain Thompson escaped only to be killed a few days later in another skirmish near the Diggers community at Wellingborough. The three other leaders – William Thompson’s brother, Corporal Perkins, and John Church – were shot on 17 May 1649. (Wikipedia)
It was the Jews who helped finance and support the puritan Oliver Cromwell to become a dictator of the British Republic. Cromwell then thanked the Jews by allowing them to live in England again.
A number of crypto-Jews in London supplied Cromwell with “intelligence” in connection with foreign and colonial affairs. In 1655, during the discussion of Manasseh ben Israel’s plea for the readmission of the Jews, a writer to the “Mercurius Politicus” living in Amsterdam suggested that the government could make good use of the Jews for obtaining political information, and that for this reason they should be propitiated. ..
Chief among these intelligencers were agents of Antonio Fernandez Carvajal, fourteen of whose despatches (now in the Clarendon Collection) are supposed by Wolf to have been obtained for Thur loe. They are said to have enabled Cromwell “to take measures for the defeat of the projected invasion of England concerted at Brussels early in 1656 between Charles II. and the Spanish government.” … These services are supposed to have been rewarded by Cromwell in 1656 by his giving permission for the resettlement of Jews in England. (Jewish Encyclopedia)
Amazingly, Cromwell even refused to tax the Jews. This tells a lot about their power in the Cromwellian England.
Britain opened its doors to Jewish immigrants, but not without seriously considering, and then rejecting, a special fiscus judaicus as a tax on all Jewish residents. (Charles Adams. The Impact of Taxes, p. 272.)
Cromwell had an aggressive foreign policy and was determined to make Britain a military superpower. Taxes and regulations started to increase ever faster. The state was becoming strong again but then Cromwell died and his son could not long keep the power especially since the people were fed up with puritanism. Charles II, the son of the executed Charles I returned but not to the king’s former power. On the contrary. Their machinery of the state had by now lost most of its power to tax and regulate. Charles II had to explicitly promise not to raise taxes. However, the parliament demanded that the deal included a new hearth tax.
Oliver Cromwell led the Rump Parliament for over a decade, but when he died the generals called for a restoration of the monarchy, provided it disclaimed any power to tax on its own. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 252.)
The Restoration of 1660 was an extremely important event for liberty because it created a balance of power between the king and the parliament where neither was supreme. Both powers checked each other. Even more importantly the bureaucratic machinery of the state had been either destroyed or neutralized. The king could rule by decree but he had very little power to enforce his decrees. Increasing regulations was now difficult and increasing taxation practically impossible.
All this does not mean that there was no state machinery. On the contrary. It continued to exist. But it had hardly any real power to tax and regulate people. Instead it was a subsidy machine whereby the king gave subsidies to his supporters. All the most important bureaucratic positions were sinecures.
In general, whether local or national, the tendency of government was to atrophy. Even had anything been desired of it, what remained of the central administration was too modest and too corrupt to interfere. Funds were embezzled or unaccounted for during years on end. An actual civil service barely existed. The two Secretaries of State, who directed most Government business, had a total working staff, including caretakers, of about two dozen. (Sean Gabb, How English Liberalism was Created by Accident and Custom, and then Destroyed by Liberals. 1998, p. 27. Hereafter How English Liberalism.)
Even if some energetic bureaucrat managed to regulate people the Jurymen could easily nullify the regulations.
After Bushell’s Case (1679), the right was unquestioned of Jurymen to find whatever verdict their conscience directed, even if against all the prosecution evidence. This was an effective check on at least unpopular oppressions. (Sean Gabb, igid. p. 25)
Localities could run their own administration but they also had to raise their own funds. In most cases people would not accept local taxes and so there was very little administration and regulation on the local level.
As for the local justices and corporations, with the supervisory Councils abolished, these could govern as much or as little as they pleased. Since they had to raise their own funds, they generally preferred the latter. (Gabb, ibid. p. 27)
Also the power of the parliament was limited because it could not give decrees and laws without the support of the king. Thus there developed a situation where neither king nor the parliament could regulate or tax efficiently. Nor would they act together against the people because of religious and other disagreements between the Whig aristocrats and the Jacobite kings. From the perspective of liberty the situation was almost perfect. There developed even stronger British culture of liberty where it was natural for people to be left alone in their liberties. Gradually this also led to the abolition of tax farming.
The British system started to improve after Cromwell. The first most notable change was the abolition of all tax-farming during the period between 1660 to 1690. In place of the farmers, a professional tax bureaucracy began to function with efficiency. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 269.)
Classical liberalism
The power of the king was limited also in the sense that he and his state machinery was clearly separate from the people. He could give decrees but if they were unpopular he would face massive passive resistance and find it very difficult to enforce the decree. Especially the common law courts would attempt to nullify unpopular decrees. There developed a clear anti-statist consciousness in the people. This sort of state-vs.-the people attitude was crucial in the development of liberty.
Best of all, this anti-statist consciousness developed on both sides of the political divide. There developed both anti-statist protestants and anti-statist Catholics. On the radical Protestant side John Locke developed the Leveller idea of individual property rights and especially the right of self-ownership and homesteading.
Locke’s entire structure of thought in his Two Treatises of Government, written in 1681-82 as a schema for justifying the forthcoming Whig revolution against the Stuarts, was an elaboration and creative development of Leveller doctrine: the beginnings in self-ownership or self-propriety, the deduced right to property and free exchange, the justification of government as a device to protect such rights, and the right of overturning a government that violates, or becomes destructive of, those ends. One of the former Leveller leaders, Major John Wildman, was even close to the Locke-Shaftesbury set during the 1680s. (Murray Rothbard. An Austrian Perspective. p. 316)
On the radical Catholic and Jacobite side the North brothers also developed ideas of Liberty. In fact, Dudley North developed the first consistent economic theory of economic freedom.
Weighing in on the side of John Locke, not only on interest rates but also in a general and comprehensive vision of economic laissez-faire that even surpassed Locke, were two brothers, Dudley and Roger North, who came from a distinguished Tory family. Here was a fascinating convergence of views of a radical Whig, and high Tories and zealous subjects of Charles and James II. (Murray Rothbard. An Austrian Perspective. p. 323)
Unfortunately Dudley’s remarkable economic treatise sank without trace and seems not to have influenced the development of economics. Probably because Dudley was such a strong supporter of James II. However, the idea of liberty did spread in the Catholic circles just as it spread in the Protestant circles. This created a strong anti-statist culture in Britain with an important more intellectual bent.
1688 The Glorious Revolution and the Bank of England
This great decentralization and balance of power in England was broken again when Jews helped the protestant Dutch prince of Orange to invade England, topple the Catholic Jacobite king and become king Wilhelm III. Now Jews were finally in a position to offer the king and the higher protestant aristocracy a sweet deal: Create a fraudulent fractional reserve banking system together with the Jewish bankers. The deal was made and the Bank of England was born in 1694.
The 1690s were a particularly difficult time for the English government. The country had just gone through four decades of revolution and civil war, in large part in opposition to high taxes, and the new government scarcely felt secure enough to impose a further bout of higher taxation.
And yet, the government had many lands it wished to conquer, especially the mighty French Empire, a feat that would entail a vast increase in expenditures. The path of deficit spending seemed blocked for the English since the government had only recently destroyed its own credit by defaulting on over half of its debt, thereby bankrupting a large number of capitalists in the realm, who had entrusted their savings to the government. Who then would lend anymore money to the English State?
At this difficult juncture, Parliament was approached by a syndicate headed by William Paterson, a Scottish promoter. The syndicate would establish a Bank of England, which would print enough bank notes, supposedly payable in gold or silver, to finance the government deficit. No need to rely on voluntary savings when the money tap could be turned on! In return, the government would keep all of its deposits at the new bank. (Murray N. Rothbard. The Case Against the Fed. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1994. P. 59.)
Finally Jews had been able to create a money machine that could now finance the state and an empire that would fight the “anti-Semites”. Jews became the junior partners of the ruling elite of the British empire.
Where, for one or another reason, monarchs were unable to make use of established institutions and elites in this way, they often found it useful to turn to Jews. For example, to finance his conquest of England, William of Orange turned to the Dutch Jewish financiers who, descended from Spanish exiles, had helped to make Holland a major commercial center and played an important role in the finances of the Dutch state. In 1688, William obtained a loan of two million gulden from the Lopez Suasso family. After he secured control of the English throne, William encouraged a number of Jewish financiers, most notably the Machado and Pereire families, to move to London where they financed William’s effort to form a military coalition against Louis XIV. (Fatal Embrace. p. 30)
There was one hitch, however. The money machine made banking and the whole economy inherently unstable.
Opening in July 1694, the Bank of England quickly issued the enormous sum of £760,000, most of which was used to purchase government debt. In less than two years time, the bank’s outstanding notes of £765,000 were only backed by £36,000 in cash. A run demanding specie smashed the bank, which was now out of business. But the English government, in the first of many such bailouts, rushed in to allow the Bank of England to ”suspend specie payments,” that is, to cease its obligations to pay in specie, while yet being able to force its debtors to pay the bank in full.
Specie payments resumed two years later, but from then on, the government allowed the Bank of England to suspend specie payment, while continuing in operation, every time it got into financial difficulties. (Murray N. Rothbard. The Case Against the Fed. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1994. P. 60).
1700’s Industrial Revolution and imperialism
The money machine helped the minimal British state expand inexorably. However, there were still many obstacles that slowed down the expansion of the state. First, the Jews and the aristocrats were afraid that the king might overuse their money machine, i.e. create too much money out of nothing. During the War of Spanish Succession the king was desperate for money and became frustrated with the cautious monetary policy of the Bank of England. He helped create a speculative South Sea Company as a competitor for the Bank of England. It was granted a monopoly in Southern seas slave trade. Speculation with its stock created the infamous South Sea Bubble that soon burst devastating the economy. The position of the Bank of England was now stronger than ever before. The Jews and aristocrats controlling the Bank of England were determined not to kill the golden geese by avoiding wild speculative schemes and keeping the increase of the money supply relatively conservative.
The second thing that slowed down the expansion of the Whig state was the fact that the king and his machinery of the state was visibly separate from the people. The money machine helped to finance the state machinery but the money went to the army and countless sinecures and corruption. King got a bigger military and bought support but that was it. The totally corrupt state machinery itself increased regulation very gradually.
The corrupt state machinery also strengthened the libertarian critique against the state. In fact, the critique came from both sides of the political divide.
[M]eeting of minds of ’extreme Left’ and ’extreme Right’ during the eighteenth century, when the imperialist-Whig mercantilist one-party Establishment, from 1715 to the 1750s, was opposed on the Left by radical libertarian Commonwealth men and on the Right by the anti-imperialist, Catholic or proto-Catholic opposition, all agreeing on denunciations of the mercantilistic, high tax, high public debt, central banking state. (Murray Rothbard. An Austrian Perspective. p. 323)
It was this critique that helped the British decrease tariffs and especially export tariffs. This was an extremely important step. The cutting of tariffs was also helped by the fact that it was just too easy to smuggle goods to England.
The English used high customs duties to try to keep Dutch goods off English markets, and they also prohibited the export of English wool, which was being smuggled to Holland, manufactured into woollen goods, and then smuggled back into England. …
English consumers sought the superior Dutch products or the low-priced, smuggled tobacco, brandy, rum wine, tea, and a great variety of other consumer goods. Most smugglers found it easy to avoid His Majesty’s Customs because of the numerous bays and coves along England’s shores. .. It has been estimated that over 50 percent of all imports escaped taxation, which must have caused enormous losses for the Crown. …
From 1721 to 1724, [Prime Minister] Walpole made some of the most positive steps of his administration toward economic growth. He cancelled export taxes on manufactured goods and greatly reduced or eliminated many tariff items, thus stimulating trade and the competitive position of British goods on world markets. One early biographer wrote in 1798, “He found our tariff the worst in the world, and left it the best.” (Impact of Taxes, p. 264, 269)
Walpole was determined to compensate the decrease in tariff revenue with an excise tax but this failed because there was massive public resistance. This was seen during the Excise Bill of 1733. With the leadership of William Pitt the British people made it clear they refused to have the Dutch system of high taxation and shouted: “No excise, no wooden shoes”.
Walpole’s attempt to introduce excises was primarily a device to frustrate customs tax evasion. … Walpole saw the excise as the future, primary tax for Britain. … Newspapers attacked his proposal with a vengeance. … Mobs roamed through the streets with placard in their hats, which read, “Liberty, Property, and No Excise.”. (Impact of Taxes, p. 264, 255, 257.)
The Excise Bill of 1733 was a proposal by the British government of Robert Walpole to impose an excise tax on a variety of products. This would have allowed Customs officers to search private dwellings to look for contraband untaxed goods. The perceived violation of the Rights of Englishmen provoked widespread opposition and the bill was eventually withdrawn. Whig opposition MP William Pitt took the lead in criticising the proposal, invoking the concept that an “Englishman’s house is his castle”.[1] (Wikipedia)
… When news of Walpole’s withdrawal of the tax bill reached the people, there were celebrations everywhere. Church bells rang out, bonfires lit up the sky, Walpole was burn in effigy, and in the cities one could hear people singing ballads amid shouts of “No excise, no wooden shoes”. (Impact of Taxes, p. 258.)
The king and his prime minster were also afraid to increase regulations and taxes too fast because there was still the possibility of Stuart restoration. Increase the power of the state too visibly and the people might start supporting the Jacobites and a new Stuart restoration. In fact, even as late as 1745 there was yet another Jacobite rebellion.
Indeed, the main reason Britain achieved great power status this time may have been because of the rebellions of the British taxpayer and the threat of more rebellions. The government was forced, probably against its will, to function on moderate taxation, thereby avoiding the economic drag that was so destructive to the Netherlands. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 261.)
For a hundred years Britain was a very free country. This enabled businessmen to invest and create new profitable companies and technological inventions. They did not have to be afraid of taxes, monopolies and cartels. Competition was relatively free and the best products had the right to win. This created the Industrial Revolution that saved mankind from the Malthusian trap.
Indeed, the main reason Britain achieved great power status this time may have been because of the rebellions of the British taxpayer and the threat of more rebellions. The government was forced, probably against its will, to function on moderate taxation, thereby avoiding the economic drag that was so destructive to the Netherlands. …
In the end the British accepted a system of many taxes that, as a whole, were reasonably fair. No one was oppressed. Everyone shouldered some of the burdens of the state. Landowners paid land taxes, but they were protected by ridiculously low assessments. Merchants paid customs and some excises, but their burdens were lightened by smuggling and evasion. Homeowners paid a house and window tax that exempted the poor. …
This philosophy of low or no taxes for the workers and the poor was not the result of humanitarianism; it was based on more solid ground – economic common sense. If workers paid high taxes, British capitalists would have to pay high wages, as in the Netherlands. This would increase the price of British goods on foreign markets and hurt trade. By keeping workers free from taxation, English traders could outsell their competitors from the Continent. That is what happened, and Britain became the leading commercial nation of the world for two hundred years. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 261-262.)
1700’s British imperialism
The Industrial Revolution developed not because of the Jewish instigated money machine but despite it. Its conservative use and the British culture of liberty, decentralization, low taxes and tariffs enabled economic freedom to break out. However, at the same time the money machine was destabilizing the economy by creating a business cycle with booms and busts. This greatly undermined the trust people had in economic freedom.
Despite these problems Britain was still the one of the freest country in the world. But why then was it also the biggest imperialist? Because of the money machine and the Paradox of Imperialism. If the state is relatively small it creates economic growth which in turn makes the state rich and able to loan a lot of money. In Britain the money machine further made it easier to take enormous loans to finance imperialism. It was the money machine that enabled the parasitic state to grow into a global monster. At the same time the money machine destroyed the reputation of liberty because economic freedom and liberty became associated with both economic instability and imperialism.
It was also the money machine that made it easier to buy and manipulate intellectuals. It is probably not on coincidence that Adam Smith and other intellectuals never directly attacked the ruling elite and its money machine. They did not even attack the state itself but only demanded more democratization. Instead of demanding the eradication of all taxation, cartel regulations, colonialism and the state power itself they wanted to check the power of the king with the help of the parliament. Instead of passive resistance, secessionism and occasional regulation and tax revolts they wanted to give the state even more power. They believed that the people should rise up against the kings by voting their representatives into parliament which then would have the sole right to create laws. In a mad greed and hubris the classical liberals imagined themselves as the representatives of people. People would vote classical liberals into power who would then limit the state from within.
This was the ultimate criminal folly. There was no excuse. The classical liberals supported the state despite understanding the risks. They understood that everybody would want to live at the expense of everybody else. They understood that the natural instinct of a man is not only to protect his work and business with cartels but also to jealously demand subsidies through income transfers. The classical liberals understood how the parliament would likely turn into a cartel and subsidy machine. But somehow they thought that people could be educated to think about the common good. The classical liberals believed that they could change the minds and even the nature of man. In this they were similar to the socialists who also wanted to change the nature of man and use the state to enforce common good. Classical liberalism was socialism. They doomed mankind into statism.
The fatal mistake of the classical liberals can hardly be blamed on the Jews. Whites did it to themselves. However, it is also true that the Jews did help these statist classical liberals with their finance and media power while at the same time denied any support to the more anti-statist classical liberals. It is also true that the Jews certainly helped to infuse Enlightenment culture and especially classical liberalism with secularism and egalitarianism which poisoned culture and democratized politics.
However, owing to its anticlericalism (as in Voltaire, for instance) and its egalitarianism, which went as far as to deny all innate differences among human beings and believed all men to be equally capable of rational thought (as in Helvetius and, under empiricist auspices, Locke, for instance), Enlightenment rationalism committed a fatal sociological error. It was blind to the fact that, in the real world, where men are not equal, its ideal of a purely contractual society based on the institution of private property could be maintained and defended against internal or external assault and invasion only if a society possessed a distinctly hierarchical structure, that is, a voluntarily acknowledged rank order of horizontally and vertically interconnected intermediary institutions and authorities; and that Christianity and the hierarchy of the Church would have to function as one of the more important of these intermediary authorities.42
Misled by its anticlericalism and egalitarianism, Enlightenment rationalism furthered the tendency, begun with the Protestant revolution, of isolating the individual vis-à-vis worldly rulers: of eliminating all intermediate authorities and subjecting each individual equally and directly to the sole authority of the state, thereby promoting the centralization of state power.
But even then the fault is Whites alone. It would have taken only one man and one manifesto of liberty that would have presented the well known parasite theory of the state in an intellectual but easily understandable and engaging manner. Even a single book about the Jewish alliance with the parasitical state and monopoly economy might have been enough. But instead of true history or Liberty Manifesto the Whites got obfuscations and lies. The most dramatic example of this was Edmund Burke. He actually wrote a Liberty Manifesto but then got greedy and claimed it was all a satire.
In 1756 Edmund Burke published his first work: Vindication of Natural Society. … Burke’s Vindication was perhaps the first modern expression of rationalistic and individualistic anarchism. … The Vindication was published anonymously when Burke was 27 years old. Nine years later, after his authorship had been discovered, Burke found himself about to embark on his famous Parliamentary career. To admit that he had seriously held such views in earlier years would have been politically disastrous. His only way out was to brush it off as a satire, thereby vindicating himself as an eternal enemy of rationalism and subversion. (Murray Rothbard. Edmund Burke, Anarchist)
1700’s Britain destroys the balance of power
The French kings became envious when they realized how Britain had its own money machine. Soon they also made an attempt to create fractional reserve banking. However, not with Jews but with a Scot, John Law. Together with the French regent Philippe II, Duke of Orleans he created a fractional reserve bank. In 1717 it was effectively turned into a central bank, Banque Royale. After initial success the fractional banking system ended in economic disaster. The French people became very suspicious of fractional reserve banking and paper money. The French kings were forced to abandon all new speculative financial schemes. Thus the Jews had an even greater incentive to help finance the British Empire. After all, the Jews were at the center of its fraudulent fractional reserve banking system.
Jews were so important for British imperialism that it probably also affected geopolitical alliances. We will never have hard proof since especially in the 1700´s Jews still kept a very low profile and did not try to influence states openly. However, it is a curious coincidence that British geopolitics started to become self-destructive in the 1700’s. This became evident when Britain supported the destruction of Sweden during the Great Northern War (1700-21). This made no sense since Sweden was never a real threat to Britain unlike Russia. It was in the interest of Britain to support Sweden in the North Europe and Habsburg Austria and Poland in Central-Europe and let the Ottoman Empire control Constantinople. This would have checked France, Spain, Russia and Prussia. It would have kept Europe decentralized and removed any serious threat to Britain and its empire.
But there was a problem. Both Sweden and Austria were very critical of the Jews. Sweden even more so. In fact, it was the most “anti-Semitic” country in the world. The Protestant Swedes had taken Luther’s warnings seriously. Jews were not even allowed to set their foot in Sweden.
In 1680 the Jews of Stockholm petitioned the king that they be permitted to reside there without abandoning their creed, but the application was denied because the local consistory had refused to endorse it. On 3 December 1685, Charles XI ordered the governor-general of the capital to see to it that no Jews were permitted to settle in Stockholm, or in any other part of the country, “on account of the danger of the eventual influence of the Jewish religion on the pure evangelical faith.” In case Jews were found in any Swedish community, they were to be notified to leave within fourteen days.[1] (Wikipedia)
During the Great Northern War the Swedish king Charles XII allied himself with the Ottoman Empire against Russia. Now some Jews started to finance Swedish war effort and at the same time pushed the king to let Jews move into Sweden. It seems Charles XII had decided to ally himself with the Jews. But then he was wounded in battle and died in 1718 at the middle of the war.
The Jews were dismayed when they realized that Swedes kept putting all kinds of obstacles to their entry. Only those Jews who loaned huge sums to the state were welcome and even their activities and movements were greatly restricted. Nowhere in Europe were Jews treated this badly.
Charles XII spent five years in Bender, Bessarabia, at the time a part of the Ottoman Empire, with his army and incurred substantial debts with Jewish and Muslim merchants, who supplied the army with equipment and provisions. On his return, several Muslim and Jewish creditors arrived in Sweden and Swedish law was altered to allow them to hold religious services and circumcise their sons. …
After the death of Charles XII in 1718, the Swedish government was financially strained and the royal household was often relieved from pecuniary difficulties by the Jewish merchants of Stockholm who insisted, in exchange, for the granting of additional civil rights to themselves and their coreligionists. As a consequence the concession of 1718 was renewed and supplemented by royal edicts of 1727, 1746, and 1748, but permission was restricted to settlement in smaller cities and rural communities. One of the most prominent Jews in Sweden at this time was the convert Lovisa Augusti, who became one of the most popular singers on the stage in Stockholm.
In 1782 an ordinance was issued (judereglementet) – due particularly to efforts of the prominent Liberal Anders Chydenius – by which Jews were restricted to reside in one of three towns: Stockholm, Gothenburg, Norrköping. To these was added the town of Karlskrona, as a Jew had established there a factory for the manufacture of sails and naval uniforms. They were not permitted to trade in markets elsewhere or to own property. Jews were ineligible for government positions and election to Parliament. They were forbidden from converting Lutherans to the Jewish religion. (Wikipedia)
Even Russia was more welcoming to the Jews. Was this the reason why Britain let Russia destroy Sweden during the Great Northern War? Another obvious explanation is the fact that the Hanoverian kings of Britain wanted to rob the town of Bremen from Sweden. However, the town could also have been acquired by allying with Sweden. But for some reason the British were happy to let Russia expand at the expense of Sweden during many wars in the 1700’s. It was Britain that let Russia become a superpower.
One thing is certain: Jews financed Britain and tried to pressure continental states to adopt a more Jew friendly line. Even the conservative Catholic Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa was pressured. This despite the fact that Austria was traditionally an ally of Britain against France. The British alliance with Jews probably helped upset the balance of power with the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 when British allied with Prussia and Austria with France.
Maria Theresa was prepared to tolerate Protestant businessmen and financiers, such as Swiss-born Johann Fries, even in Vienna, but this stemmed from her urge to be freed from her father’s ‘usurious’ Jewish financiers. Jewish financiers such as Diego d’Aguilar were still significant sources of credit for the Habsburg enterprise, but Maria Theresa’s anti-Jewish prejudice led her in 1744 to order the expulsion of the Jews from Prague and eventually all Bohemian crownlands, for alleged treason.The expulsion order was rescinded in 1748 after interventions by various powers including the British, but not before inflicting severe disruption on Prague Jewry. Maria Theresa herself remained unrepentant about her hatred of Jews: “I know of no greater plague than this race, which on account of its deceit, usury, and hoarding of money is driving my subjects to beggary.” (Steven Beller, A Concise History of Austria,Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press 2006, p. 107.)
The new alliance between Britain and Prussia was certainly beneficial for the Jews because the Protestant Prussian militarist state was largely financed by Jewish bankers. It is most probable that without Jewish support Prussia would never have been able to challenge Austria and become a great power first in Germany and then in the world. Even if there had been no Miracle of the House of Brandenburg the Jews would probably still have been able to help Prussia destroy the free decentralist Germany.
The order of Teutonic Knights, who ruled East Prussia from the 13th century, in 1309 expressly prohibited Jews from entering their territory. … It was only with the complete secularization of the Teutonic order under Duke Albert I of Prussia (1522–77) that two Jewish physicians were allowed to settle temporarily in Koenigsberg (1538–41). … From the 17th century Jews came in ever increasing numbers to the then staunchly Protestant region, where they were welcomed by the ruling circles. In 1664 Moses Jacobson de Jonge of Amsterdam received very favorable commercial privileges (subsequently renewed) in Memel , where he became the most important merchant, paying more customs dues than any of his Christian counterparts. He became a Court Jew in 1685 and his sons inherited the function. In Koenigsberg, capital of East Prussia, Jews were permitted to graduate in medicine from the university in 1658, and Jewish merchants were encouraged to settle soon after. A synagogue was built there in 1680 and a cemetery opened in 1703. The community grew during the 18th and 19th centuries, remaining the economic, social, and religious center of the region. In the latter half of the 18th century Jewish communities were founded in Elblag , Marienwerder, Lyck , and elsewhere. (Jewish Virtual Library)
It has been one of the mysteries of geopolitics why Britain abandoned its old alliance with the Habsburg-Austrian Holy Roman Emperors. It was a natural alliance that maintained the balance of power in Europe. It checked the power of both France and Russia and kept both Germany and Italy decentralized. For some mysterious reason Britain seems to have made a conscious decision to break the balance of power. It not only helped Russia destroy Sweden but also let Prussia steal Silesia from Austria. It was Britain that let Prussia build up a new great power in Germany and Europe. And it was only the first step. For the next 200 years Britain would continue to disrupt the balance of power in Europe. Why would it do something so self-destructive and create continuous wars? Perhaps because there were powerful special interest groups that influenced the British foreign policy. Such special interest groups had to be really powerful to override the geopolitical interests of the British state. Certainly one of those interest groups were the Jews.
Supporting Prussia and Russia at the expense of the Swedes also sealed the fate of Poland. Traditionally the Jews had dominated the economy of Poland and supported it against Russia. Poland was the promised land of the Jews. There was also a natural alliance between the Swedes, Poles and Turks against Russia which kept her from both the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. Similarly there was a natural alliance between Sweden, Poland and Austria against Prussia that kept Germany decentralized.
By supporting both Russia and Prussia against Sweden the Jews and Britain sealed the fate of Poland. It was only matter of time before Prussia and Russia would partition Poland. Austria was never very interested in the partition because it realized how much that would increase the power of both Russia and Prussia. Only when Austria realized that the decision had been made did it join in the dismemberment of Poland.
Britain and Jews were shocked by the partition but could not do much especially since the final partitions of Poland took place during the French Revolution. However, Poland was not that important for Jews anymore especially since Polish nationalism was on the rise. Jews had a new promised lands: France and Britain. Jews were also now at the heart of British Empire. Poland was an anachronistic Jewish run monopoly economy. The money cartel, i.e. the money machine was a much smarter way to manipulate the Goyim.
1776 The American Revolution
Jews helped to create the British Empire but were disappointed to note that the British kings and the high aristocracy were determined to keep the Jews as distant junior partners. They were accepted in trade and banking but not in universities, army, social circles or parliament. And the ordinary people were even more against the Jews. This became painfully evident with the Jew Bill of 1753.
During the Jacobite rising of 1745, the Jews had shown particular loyalty to the government. Their chief financier, Sampson Gideon, had strengthened the stock market, and several of the younger members had volunteered in the corps raised to defend London. Possibly as a reward, Henry Pelham in 1753 brought in the Jew Bill of 1753, which allowed Jews to become naturalised by application to Parliament. It passed the Lords without much opposition, but on being brought down to the House of Commons, the Tories made protest against what they deemed an “abandonment of Christianity.” The Whigs, however, persisted in carrying out at least one part of their general policy of religious toleration, and the bill was passed and received royal assent (26 Geo. II., cap. 26). The public reacted with an enormous outburst of antisemitism, and the Bill was repealed in the next sitting of Parliament, in 1754.[2] (Wikipedia)
In British America there was much less discrimination against the Jews. In fact, America was largely created by Philo-Semitic Puritans. The American Puritans feared the God of the Old Testament, not the New Testament. The Puritans were remarkably like the Jews in both action and appearance. In fact, many of the early American towns resembled Jewish ghettos. Some of them even outlawed Christmas. The American Puritans took the Old Testament so seriously that many of them learned to speak Hebrew. In fact, all the American universities taught Hebrew.
At the time of the American Revolution, the interest in the knowledge of Hebrew was so widespread as to allow the circulation of the story that ‘certain members of Congress proposed that the use of English be formally prohibited in the United States, and Hebrew substituted for it. (Abraham Katsch. The Biblical Heritage of American Democracy, p. 70. SimpleToRemember.)
Jews also greatly influenced Freemasonry. That is not surprising since it was the first large scale Gentile movement that accepted Jews as members. In America Freemasonry was more powerful than anywhere else.
Jewish names appear among the founders of Freemasonry in colonial America, and in fact it is probable that Jews were the first to introduce the movement into the country. Tradition connects Mordecai Campanall, of Newport, Rhode Island, with the supposed establishment of a lodge there in 1658. In Georgia four Jews appear to have been among the founders of the first lodge, organized in Savannah in 1734. Moses Michael Hays, identified with the introduction of the Scottish Rite into the United States, was appointed deputy inspector general of Masonry for North America in about 1768.
In 1769 Hays organized the King David’s Lodge in New York, moving it to Newport in 1780. He was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts from 1788 to 1792. Moses *Seixas was prominent among those who established the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island, and was Grand Master from 1802 to 1809. A contemporary of Hays, Solomon *Bush, was deputy inspector general of Masonry for Pennsylvania, and in 1781 Jews were influential in the Sublime Lodge of Perfection in Philadelphia which played an important part in the early history of Freemasonry in America. (Jewish Virtual Library)
The Jews decided to use their business and Freemason networks to help turn an American tax rebellion into a war against Britain. The British would have been ready to decrease taxation but they were not ready to grant Americans representation in British parliament. That would eventually have amounted to colonial rule over the mother country because the population in the colonies was expanding exponentially.
Many libertarians have seen the American Revolution as a classical liberal revolution. They are right. It repeated the mistake of confusing liberty with democratic representation. It would have been much better for the Americans not to demand any representation in the British parliament but only demand a decrease in taxes and regulations. This could easily have been achieved through passive resistance and occasional tax rebellions. America would truly have become the land of the free and the course of history would have turned towards liberty.
This would have been very easy because the taxes in America were already very low.
[From 1764 to 1775,] the nearly two million white colonists in America paid on the order of about 1 percent of the annual taxes levied on the roughly 8.5 million residents of Britain, or one twenty-fifth, in per capita terms, not taking into account the higher average income and consumption in the colonies.. [In 1775] British tax burdens were ten or more times heavier than those in the colonies” (Alvin Rabushka. Taxation in Colonial America. Princeton University Press 2008, p. 729, 867).
The freedom in America was the envy of the world.
The Swedish botanist Pehr Kahn, who visited the colonies in 1750, recorded the following: “There is such an amount of good land yet uncultivated that a newly married man can, without difficulty, get a spot of ground where he may comfortably subsist with his wife and children. The taxes are very low, and he need not be under any concern on their account. The liberties he enjoys are so great that he considers himself a prince in his possessions”. (Alvin Rabushka. A Tax Revolt, First and Foremost.)
Gary North notes the freedom of the Colonial America:
The colonists had a sweet deal in 1775. Great Britain was the second freest nation on earth. Switzerland was probably the most free nation, but I would be hard-pressed to identify any other nation in 1775 that was ahead of Great Britain. And in Great Britain’s Empire, the colonists were by far the freest. I will say it, loud and clear: the freest society on earth in 1775 was British North America, with the exception of the slave system. Anyone who was not a slave had incomparable freedom. (Gary North. Tricked on the Fourth of July.)
But why did the Americans turn a tax rebellion into a war against Britain? Wars are extremely expensive. It is safe to say that without the financial support of the Jews the Americans would not have gone to war and even if they had they certainly would have lost it. Seymour Brody notes that the richest Jew in America, Aaron Lopez was the “Merchant King Who Kept The Revolutionary Army Supplied.”:
Aaron Lopez was major factor in the Colonies’ ability to continue to revolt against the British in the quest for freedom. He is said to have owned, whole or in part, 30 transoceanic ships and more than 100 coastal vessels that became an important delivery arm for supplying sorely needed supplies to the Revolutionary Army. (Seymour Brody. Jewish Heroes & Heroines of America: 151 True Stories of Jewish American Heroism. p. 25. Google Books.)
Brody does not tell us that Lopez was a slave trader. Wikipedia calls Lopez a philanthropist but does passingly mention slave trading:
Between 1761 and 1774, Lopez was involved in the slave trade.[9] Historian Eli Faber determined Lopez underwrote 21 slave ships during a period in which Newport sent a total of 347 slave ships to Africa.[10] (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia tries to cover-up the central role of Jews in slave trade by claiming that the role of Jews was minimal. The long Wikipedia entry on the Atlantic slave trade does not contain the word Jew or Jewish. Also Professor Tony Martin is not mentioned despite the fact that he promoted the famous book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. The role of Lopez and other Jewish slave traders as financiers and supporters of the American Revolution certainly helps to explain why the American revolutionaries defended slavery.
Another important financier of the Revolutionary War was Haym Salomon. He seems to have been the real power behind the American war effort. Salomon also organized war finance from France and the Dutch Republic. It is safe to say that neither of which would have sent the money had important Jews not encouraged and brokered the financial deals.
Salomon resumed his activities as a broker. He became the agent to the French consul as well as the paymaster for the French forces in North America. In 1781, he began working extensively with Robert Morris, the newly appointed Superintendent for Finance for the Thirteen Colonies.[7]
From the period of 1781–84, records show Salomon’s fundraising and personal lending helped provide over $650,000 (approximately over $9.4 billion in 2017 dollars [8]) in financing to George Washington in his war effort. His most meaningful financial contribution, however, came immediately prior to the final revolutionary war battle at Yorktown.[9]
In August 1781, the Continental Army trapped Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis in the Virginia coastal town of Yorktown. George Washington and the main army and Count de Rochambeau with his French army decided to march from the Hudson Highlands to Yorktown and deliver the final blow. But Washington’s war chest was completely empty, as was that of Congress. Without food, uniforms and supplies, Washington’s troops were close to mutiny.[9]
Washington determined that he needed at least $20,000 to finance the campaign. When Morris told him there were no funds and no credit available, Washington gave him a simple but eloquent order: “Send for Haym Salomon”. Salomon raised $20,000, through the sale of bills of exchange. With that contribution, Washington conducted the Yorktown campaign, which proved to be the final battle of the Revolution.[5] Salomon brokered the sale of a majority of the war aid from France and the Dutch Republic, selling bills of exchange to American merchants.(Wikipedia)
Also the important rabbinical Seixas family supported the revolution. The first rabbi born in America, Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745-1816) was the leader of the Jewish community in New York and consistently supported the rebellion from the start. His farther Isaac was one of the originators of the Revolutionary War. One of his brothers, Abraham was an officer in the Revolutionary Army and the other brother Benjamin was one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange.
Isaac Mendes Seixas signed the Non-Importation Agreement Act, one of a series of acts of resistance which led to the American Revolutionary War.[2] His eldest brother, Moses Mendes Seixas (1744–1809), a merchant, helped organize the Bank of Rhode Island in 1796, became the president of the historic Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, and led the congregation’s welcome for President George Washington. His younger brother Abraham Mendes Seixas (1751–1799), was an officer in the Continental Army. Another brother, Benjamin Mendes Seixas (1748–1817), was one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange. (Wikipedia)
The Revolutionary war lasted many years and increased taxation and regulation to unheard of levels in America. The early American government also crated a paper currency.
To finance the Revolutionary War, which broke out in 1775, the Continental Congress early hit on the device of issuing fiat paper money. The leader in the drive for paper money was Governor Morris, the highly conservative young scion of the New York landed aristocracy. There was no pledge to redeem the paper, even in the future, but it was supposed to be retired in seven years by taxes levied pro rata by the separate states.
Thus, a heavy future tax burden was supposed to be added to the inflation brought about by the new paper money. The retirement pledge, however, was soon forgotten, as Congress, enchanted by this new, seemingly costless form of revenue, escalated its emissions of fiat paper. As a historian has phrased it, “such was the beginning of the ‘federal trough,’ one of America’s most imperishable institutions.”
By the spring of 1781, the Continentals were virtually worthless, exchanging on the market at 168 paper dollars to one dollar in specie. This collapse of the Continental currency gave rise to the phrase, “not worth a Continental.” To top this calamity, several states issued their own paper. (Murray N. Rothbard. A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2005. P. 60.)
When paper money predictably increased prices the government instituted price controls that practically socialized the whole economy. Only when the economy was so bad that the army could not be supplied were the price controls abandoned in 1778.
Our Continental Congress first authorized the printing of Continental notes in 1775. The Congress was warned against printing more and more of them. In a 1776 pamphlet, Pelatiah Webster, America’s first economist, told his fellow men that Continental currency might soon become worthless unless something was done to curb the further printing and issuance of this paper money.
The people and the Congress refused to listen to his wise advice. With more and more paper money in circulation, consumers kept bidding up prices. Pork rose from 4¢ to 8¢ a pound. Beef soared from about 4¢ to 100 a pound. As one historian tells us, “By November, 1777, commodity prices were 480% above the prewar average.”
The situation became so bad in Pennsylvania that the people and legislature of this state decided to try “a period of price control, limited to domestic commodities essential for the use of the army.” It was thought that this would reduce the cost of feeding and supplying our Continental Army. It was expected to reduce the burden of war.
The prices of uncontrolled, imported goods then went sky high, and it was almost impossible to buy any of the domestic commodities needed for the Army. The controls were quite arbitrary. Many farmers refused to sell their goods at the prescribed prices. Few would take the paper Continentals. Some, with large families to feed and clothe, sold their farm products stealthily to the British in return for gold. For it was only with gold that they could buy the necessities of life which they could not produce for themselves.
On December 5, 1777, the Army’s Quartermaster-General, refusing to pay more than the government-set prices, issued a statement from his Reading, Pennsylvania headquarters saying, “If the farmers do not like the prices allowed them for this produce let them choose men of more learning and understanding the next election.”
This was the winter of Valley Forge, the very nadir of American history. On December 23, 1777, George Washington wrote to the President of the Congress, “that, notwithstanding it is a standing order, and often repeated, that the troops shall always have two days’ provisions by them, that they might be ready at any sudden call; yet an opportunity has scarcely ever offered, of taking an advantage of the enemy, that has not been either totally obstructed, or greatly impeded, on this account…. we have no less than two thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight men now in camp unfit for duty, because they are barefoot and otherwise naked…. I am now convinced beyond a doubt, that, unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place, this army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things: starve, dissolve, or disperse in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can.
The severity of the situation increased. Our ragged regimentals were dispersing. In February, 1778, the Pennsylvania Assembly “passed a law appointing commissioners in every city of the state with full power to purchase or to seize, at stated prices, all provisions necessary for the army.” But, appeals to patriotism, accompanied by force and threats of more force, failed to bring out the necessary provisions. The farmers just would not trade the fruit of their hard labors for paper money which bought less and less as the weeks passed by. … Anne Bezanson’s valuable book, Prices and Inflation during the American Revolution, tells us, “By June 1, 1778, the act of regulating the several articles on the price lists was wholly suspended.” Price control had failed. (Percy L. Greaves Jr. From Price Control to Valley Forge 1777-78.)
It was only because France, Spain and the Netherlands joined the war that the Revolutionary War was won by the Americans. This only increased the power of the Jews since they could now loan money to all involved. Also America was now indebted to many Jewish bankers.
However, soon many Jewish bankers were alarmed to notice that the tax revenues were still not enough to finance all the government debts and expenses. Even worse, after the war America became a loose libertarian confederation of virtually independent states. The American Articles of Confederation gave practically no protection to slavery, public dept and taxation.
The final draft of Articles was ratified by the states in 1781. The national government, called the “United States in Congress assembled,” was limited. Many of its powers required a three-fourths vote, especially on matters of finance and war. As expected, the Congress could not tax–everyone agreed to that-but when money was needed, a requisition was made upon the states based on the value of privately owned real property. (Impact of Taxes, p. 315)
The the libertarian counter-revolution against big government had started again. The Articles of Confederation were a disaster for the Jews so it is not surprising the Jewish slave traders and bankers started to support the Federalist Party.
The new federal government formed by the Articles of Confederation was not permitted to levy any taxes upon the public; and any fundamental extension of its powers required unanimous consent by every state government. Above all, the military and war-making power of the national government was hedged in by restraint and suspicion; for the eighteenth century libertarians understood that war, standing armies, and militarism had long been the main method for aggrandizing State power. …
The revolution resulted in governments unprecedented in restrictions placed on their power. But while there was very little institutional resistance in America to the onrush of liberalism, there did appear, from the very beginning, powerful elite forces, especially among the large merchants and planters, who wished to retain the restrictive British “mercantilist” system of high taxes, controls, and monopoly privileges conferred by the government. These groups wished for a strong central and even imperial government; in short, they wanted the British system without Great Britain. These conservative and reactionary forces first appeared during the Revolution, and later formed the Federalist party and the Federalist administration in the 1790s. (Murray N. Rothbard. For A New Liberty. The Libertarian Manifesto. P. 6, 8)
Federalists were alarmed that competition between the semi-independent states of the Confederation was also creating a free trade area in America. Liberty was breaking out. Alexander Hamilton bitterly complained about this.
The American confederation was destined to become a free-trade area, even without a consolidated union. Hamilton, in Federalist No. 12, all but admitted, and complained, that such would be the case. He worried that the multiplicity of state jurisdictions would keep tariffs too low and variable for the raising of sufficient revenue or the provision of industrial promotion.
The relative situation of these States; the number of rivers with which they are intersected, and of bays that wash their shores; the facility of communication in every direction; the affinity of language and manners; the familiar habits of intercourse—all these are circumstances that would conspire to render an illicit trade between them a matter of little difficulty and would insure frequent evasions of the commercial regulations of each other. The separate States or confederacies would be necessitated by mutual jealousy to avoid the temptations to that kind of trade by the lowness of their duties. (Hamilton) (Arthur Scott Trask. Rethinking the Articles of Confederation)
This libertarian development irked especially those Jewish slave traders and financiers who had been one of the biggest supporters of the American Revolution. They were determined to turn America into a strong state. They encouraged and financed the federalists to turn the Confederation into a Union. Salomon had already made sure that many of the leaders of the American Revolution were in his pocket.
Salomon also personally supported various members of the Continental Congress during their stay in Philadelphia, including James Madison and James Wilson. He requested below-market interest rates, and he never asked for repayment.[10] (Wikipedia)
In the diary of Robert Morris, Superintendent of Finance for the new American government, Salomon’s name appears frequently in the period 1781-84. Morris wrote: “This broker has been useful to the public interests …” Salomon prospered and was able to be financially helpful to a number of public figures, such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. In 1782, Madison acknowledged the “kindness of our little friend in Front Street, whose assistance will preserve me from extremities but I never resort to it without great mortification as he obstinately rejects all recompense.” (Jewish Museum)
The federalists found many supporters because the new democratic structure of the American states also encouraged people to demand ever more cartels and subsidies.
Regrettably, as is the case so often in our history, many sought political panaceas to escape economic realities. Mechanics and manufacturers petitioned their state legislatures for protective tariffs to exclude lower cost British-made goods. Ship builders and owners lobbied for navigation laws to exclude British shipping from American ports, and southern exporters and northern merchants pleaded for retaliatory legislation to force open closed British markets. Farmers demanded that paper money be issued and lent on the security of land. Only a few years after independence, Americans were trying to replicate the main features of the British colonial and mercantile system from which they had just freed themselves. …
The progressive historian Charles A. Beard shocked, shocked, the nation in 1913 with the publication of his Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. He pointed out that those who wanted a new national government were personally interested in the outcome, standing to benefit financially if it was ratified. Beard pointed out that “large and important groups of economic interests were adversely affected by the system of government under the Articles of Confederation, namely, those of public securities, shipping and manufacturing, money at interest; in short, capital as opposed to land.” After failing to strengthen the Articles through amendments, the leaders of these groups united behind an effort to institute a new government with the powers to raise taxes, fund the debt, enact tariffs and navigation laws. (Arthur Scott Trask. Rethinking the Articles of Confederation)
Also speculators pushed hard for a new constitution so that they could make huge profits.
The mass of federal and state debt could have depreciated and passed out of existence by the end of the war, but the process was stopped and reversed by Robert Morris, wealthy Philadelphia merchant and virtual economic and financial czar of the Continental Congress in the last years of the war. Morris, leader of the nationalist forces in American politics, moved to make the depreciated federal debt ultimately redeemable in par and also agitated for federal assumption of the various state debts. The reason for this was twofold: (a) to confer a vast subsidy on speculators who had purchased the public debt at highly depreciated values, by paying interest and principal at par in specie; and (b) to build up agitation for taxing power in the Congress, which the Articles of Confederation refused to allow to the federal government.
The decentralist policy of the states’ raising taxes or issuing new paper money to pay off the pro rata federal debt as well as their own was thwarted by the adoption of the Constitution, which brought about the victory of the nationalist program, led by Morris’s youthful disciple and former aide, Alexander Hamilton. (Murray N. Rothbard. A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2005. P. 62.)
It is probably safe to say that many Jewish financiers pushed hard for the creation of a strong government that could collect tariffs and taxes. Only then could it by possible to finance a strong army, extensive public works, big public dept and a Central Bank. It seems that these Jews made sure their man, Alexander Hamilton would organize a coup. After all, he was close to powerful Jews all his life. There has been much speculation who was the real father of Hamilton but it is certain that his adventurous mother of unclear ancestry, Rachael Faucette’s first marriage was to John Levine. He probably was a Jew and so Hamilton had a Jewish half-brother. However, historians have tried to cover-up this direct Jewish connection despite admitting that Hamilton went to a Jewish school.
Most suspiciously, despite being a poor orphan bastard with unclear ancestry from an obscure Caribbean island Hamilton managed to find scores of rich and powerful protectors in New York. Almost immediately after having entered America he became the protege of the very rich and distinguished Schuyler family whose daughter Elisabeth Schuyler he also later married. It was this Schuyler family who together with Hayman Solomon helped Hamilton push for federation, become the Secretary of Treasury and create both the Central Bank and the statist credit of America. Their scheming worked especially since they got the support of the war hero George Washington.
During an economic depression, with farm prices low and foreign markets closed, the state government was taxing the farmers (payable in hard money only) to pay wealthy eastern creditors who had lent depreciated paper (accepted at full face value) to the state government for bonds during the war.
The farmers either could not or would not pay, and when they failed to do, state judges were quick to confiscate their farms. The farmers organized into a militia and marched on the courts, which they closed. Seeing an opportunity, the nationalist leaders were quick to misrepresent the grievances and aims of the insurgents. They claimed that the Shaysites, and similar groups in other states, were radical inflationists, communists, and levelers out to defraud their creditors and redistribute property, instead of being, what in truth they were, property-owning, anti-tax rebels who wanted to keep their farms.
Obviously, the nationalists wanted to scare the country into supporting a more vigorous government. George Washington was terrified. “We are fast verging toward anarchy and confusion,” he wrote. ..
The nationalists were able to exploit the situation sufficiently to secure a federal convention to be held in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787. Exceeding their instructions (which were only to draw up a few amendments), the delegates decided to throw out the Articles altogether and write a new national constitution which was subsequently ratified by the states (but not without considerable opposition and probably a national majority opposed to it). …
The strong central authority they created would in time reproduce every statist feature of the British system—political corruption, perpetual debt, debilitating taxation, consolidated power, and a global empire. (Arthur Scott Trask. Rethinking the Articles of Confederation)
Scheming took time but finally in 1788-9 the libertarian anti-Federalist opposition was defeated with a coup d’etat. The anti-Federalists did manage to add the Bill of Rights to the constitution but it only slowed down the expansion of statist powers. The American Confederation was now turned into a centralized United States of America through a new centralist constitution. Especially the Federalists together with the Jewish businessmen and slave traders helped make sure that tariffs, taxes, slavery and the slave trade would be protected by the constitution. Taxes, regulations and even censorship became now worse than ever.
Many Americans openly questioned the wisdom of the revolution. Because of the federalists, taxation with representation had turned out to be much worse than taxation without representation. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 324)
Compared to the Colonial America taxes in the USA had actually tripled!
Historians have written that taxes in the new American nation rose and remained considerably higher, perhaps three times higher, than they were under British rule. More money was required for national defense than previously needed to defend the frontier from Indians and the French, and the new nation faced other expenses. (Alvin Rabushka. A Tax Revolt, First and Foremost.)
It is probably safe to say that the Jews were an important factor in the strengthening of the state. First they helped a tax rebellion turn into a political rebellion. Then they helped turn the libertarian Confederation into a strong Federalist state that protected slavery. Without the Jews there might only have been a tax rebellion that had turned America into a true land of liberty.
Luckily, there was still one thing that slowed down the growth of the American state: Virgin land supported the culture of liberty that created occasional tax rebellions that also helped the Jeffersonians to battle the Federalists.
We can now put in historical context Jefferson’s comment that it was good medicine for government to have a rebellion every twenty years or so. In the course of his lifetime there had been almost a dozen rebellions he was acutely aware of. Six were in the United States, starting with the Stamp Act Rebellion and ending with Fries Rebellion. All of these rebellions, including the American Revolution, were tax revolts of varying degrees of intensity. In Europe, there were a number of tax revolts in the seventeenth century, from the excise revolts in Britain, to the tax-farmer revolts in the Netherlands, to the innumerable revolts and the revolution in France. Again, all were tax revolts.
So when Jefferson tells us rebellions are good tonic for government, in his frame of reference he was talking about tax rebellions. For a nation that believes in checks and balances in government, no doubt the most effective check on a bad tax system is what Jefferson had in mind. He even felt governments should not discourage rebellions or be too punitive against unsuccessful rebels:
An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishments as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.22
Jefferson justified tolerance for civic disorder and rebellion by referring to a Latin maxim, no longer espoused much today: “Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem” (“Rather a dangerous liberty than a peaceful servitude”). (Impact of Taxes, p. 327)
1789 The French Revolution
While Jews became ever closer with the British in the 1700’s the French kings became ever more suspicious. They also greatly increased state revenues by eliminating many Jewish tax collectors and cartels. They kept selling tax collection/farming but not to Jews but Frenchmen who then became patrons of art and science. Both Anne Robert Turgot and Antoine Lavoisier were tax collectors at some point of their lives. Unlike the Jewish tax collectors they tried their best not only to ease the tax burden of the people but also used the proceeds to develop science. Lavoisier developed modern chemistry while Turgot developed a libertarian economic theory that showed how tax revenue can be increased by lowering tax rates and eliminating regulations.
Turgot supported the libertarian leanings of the Physiocrat school of economics and wanted to institute free trade in France.
It is fitting, then, that Turgot developed his laissez-faire views most fully in one of his early works, the “Elegy to Gournay” (1759) a tribute offered when the marquis died young after a long illness.1 Turgot made it clear that, for Gournay, the network of detailed mercantilist regulation of industry was not simply intellectual error, but a veritable system of coerced cartelization and special privilege conferred by the state. Turgot spoke of:
innumerable statutes, dictated by the spirit of monopoly, the whole purpose of which were [sic] to discourage industry, to concentrate trade within the hands of few people by multiplying formalities and charges, by subjecting industry to apprenticeships and journeymanships of ten years in some trades which can be learned in ten days, by excluding those who were not sons of masters, or those born outside a certain class, and by prohibiting the employment of women in the manufacture of cloth.
For Turgot, freedom of domestic and foreign trade followed equally from the enormous mutual benefits of free exchange. All the restrictions “forget that no commercial transactions can be anything other than reciprocal,” and that it is absurd to try to sell everything to foreigners while buying nothing from them in return. (Murray Rothbard. The Brilliance of Turgot.)
Turgot pointed out that market fairs were cartels. People should have the right to trade also outside of fairs like in the Netherlands.
Indeed, in an article on “Fairs and Markets,” written two years earlier for the great Encyclopédie, Turgot had quoted Gournay as praising the free internal markets of Holland. Whereas other nations had confined trade to fairs in limited times and places, “In Holland there are no fairs at all, but the whole extent of the State and the whole year are, as it were, a continuous fair, because commerce in that country is always and everywhere equally flourishing.” (Murray Rothbard. The Brilliance of Turgot.)
Turgot almost freed France. The absolutist but enlightened king of France, Luis XVI made Turgot his finance minister. Turgot understood that the answer was not to increase taxation by removing the tax exemptions of the aristocracy and clergy. On the contrary, the answer was to decrease taxes on the peasants. But how then could the state pay off its debts? Simple, by increasing production by eradicating many monopolies and cartels. Turgot understood that economic freedom increases tax revenues. In fact it could even be possible to increase tax revenues by decreasing both taxes and cartels. The most important thing was to free the markets. Turgot was very clear: “All branches of commerce ought to be free, equally free, and entirely free.”
All this would take time a couple of years. In the meantime it was also important for the government to cut expenses. That was the only way to stop the rising interest expenses on the public debt. It was especially important to cut the enormous expenses of the King’s household. This doomed Turgot’s libertarian economic plan because the queen Marie Antoinette did not accept any real cuts in expenses. She also allied herself with those who wanted France to help the American Revolution against the British.
This was a watershed in Western history. If Turgot had not been fired only after 18 months he might have liberalized the French economy and created a libertarian revolution from the top. Instead the monarchy continued to spend lavishly, went bankrupt and ushered in the socialist French Revolution.
Marie Antoinette has been blamed for the Revolution. Contemporaries accused her of being a total airhead and a big spender, Madame Deficit. Reportedly when she was told of the danger of revolution because the poor had no bread to eat she is supposedly to have said: Let them eat cake! The story is false. She was no airhead but a greedy and skillful schemer with many powerful allies. If she had been an airhead Turgot would probably have remained the finance minister and the West would have been saved from the French revolution and socialism.
From the Jewish perspective the American Revolution had practically killed three flies with one blow. Not only Britain and America but also France was now deep in debt and even more dependent on the Jews. Soon the king of France was pressured to abandon absolutism and ask help from the parliament. He refused and maintained his power. However, the Jews had been able to infiltrate the French aristocracy through their connections to freemasonry. This made it possible for them to support and even perhaps instigate the French Revolution which then granted them full civil rights.
Most importantly, the Jews had a close ally: King’s cousin, Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orleans also known as Philippe Egalite. He was also the Grand Master of the Masonic Grand Orient de France. For many years Philippe openly and actively tried to topple the king and create a constitutional monarchy.
As the new Duke of Orléans, one of the many estates Philippe inherited from his father was the Palais-Royal, which became known as the Palais-Égalité in 1792,[14] because he opened up its doors to all people of France, regardless of their estate (class). He employed Swiss guards to refuse entry only to “drunkards, women in excessively indecent dress, and those in tatters.”[15] He built shops and cafés where people could interact, and soon it became a hub for social life in Paris.
As the Parisian police had no authority to enter the Duke’s private property, it became a hub for illegal activity, such as trade in stolen goods, suspicious deals, and the spread of revolutionary ideas. In fact, it was a common place for Jacobins to meet and discuss their plans and ideas.[12] Many members of the National Assembly claimed that the Palais-Royal was the “birthplace of the Revolution.” Philippe’s goal was to create a place where people could meet, which he argued was a crucial part of democracy and a “physical need for civil life.”[15]
.. One of the main accusations thrown at Philippe d’Orléans was the initiation of the Women’s March on Versailles on 5 October 1789, which people believed was done in order to overthrow the King and gain popularity amongst the people. He was accused of funding the riots, as well as calling the rioters his “friends”, who were chanting: “Long live our father, long live King d’Orléans!” The High Court of the Grand Châtelet also accused him of acting as an accomplice to Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, in an attempt to murder Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, during this period. (Wikipedia)
Naturally the role of the Jews and Freemasons was covert. We can be quite certain that their role was significant but historians are reluctant to research the issue. The only major attempts seems to be Nesta Webster’s books. In her first book on the French Revolution she concentrates on Freemasons and the Illuminati. In her later book, World Revolution Webster notes the role of Jews but complains of the lack of primary sources.
The question then arises: Were the Jews concerned in the organization of Illuminism and its subsequent developments? At present this is not clearly proved. It is true that Cagliostro was probably a Jew, that Kolmer who partly indoctrinated Weishaupt may have been a Jew, that a certain Simonini wrote to the Abbe Barruel in 1806 declaring that ” the freemasons and the illumines were founded by two Jews ” — whose names the author has forgotten! — that the Jewish financiers of Frankfurt may have contributed to the funds of the Illuminati or of the Duke d’Orleans, but all this rests so far on no contemporary documentary evidence. (Nesta Webster. World Revolution. p. 311)
The first detailed study of the intellectual underground of revolutions appeared in 1980 when James H. Billington published his book Fire In The Minds of Men. The book avoids passing judgment on concrete historical events but makes it clear how revolutions are not spontaneous. Gary North explains:
Billington focuses on the revolutionary underground: secret societies, pornographers, occultists, and revolutionary journalists, who established the basic philosophy and organizational structure of the twentieth century’s bloody revolutionary groups. What he shows is that the “rational” socialists and revolutionaries of the “left” were from the beginning deeply mixed up in such things as occultism, irrationalism, and pornography. He exposes the dark side of “progressive” revolutionary forces. …
[H]is book begins with the most important of all these alliances historically, the alliance between alienated segments of the French nobility (especially the King’s cousin, Philip of Orleans) and the perverts of the Parisian underground. Philip gave them legal and geographical sanctuary and a forum for their ideas in the gigantic garden spot in central Paris, which he controlled, the Palais-Royal. As Billington remarks, “Nowhere-the literal meaning of Utopia first became someplace in the Palais-Royal” (p. 25). He makes it clear that the Parisian mob was the tool of this alliance, not an independent force in the coming of the French Revolution. The French Revolution and the Russian Revolution were not the product of impersonal forces of history. They were the product of long years of conscious conspiratorial organization and planning. (Gary North. Conspiracy: A Biblical View. p. 81-82. Download pdf.)
The Revolutionary French assembly soon stole Church property and created an inflationary bank. This largely destroyed the economy and led to price controls and to the Terror.
In March 1790, the Assembly authorized the printing of 400 million livres of paper assignats of denomination of 200, 300, and 1,000 livres, bearing three percent interest, and receivable for taxes and the purchase of the national properties.
Many delegates, including Cazales, Bergasse, Maury, Necker, and Nemours, opposed the measure on economical principles. They argued that the new currency would depreciate, that it would be followed by additional emissions, further depreciation, and that the calamities of John Law’s Mississippi Bubble (1717–20) would be re-enacted across republican France. Their objections and warnings were brushed aside. The enthusiasts essentially argued that economic laws did not apply to France, that she had learned from John Law’s failed experiment never to overdo paper money, that a republican government could more safely inflate than a monarchical one (the precise opposite of the truth), and that the immense landed wealth of France provided solid security. Even though the issue was relatively moderate, the assignats promptly depreciated five, and later seven, percent, as measured against gold.
It should be noted that the Assembly was not a total bust when it came to economic freedom. They did abolish the tithe, the corvee, the guilds, and all internal custom barriers. However, they would go no farther, and would soon regress into a kind of hyper mercantilism. Burke writes of their open and contemptuous “defiance of economic principles.” Jean Baptiste Say recalled with disgust that “the moment there was any question in the National Assembly of commerce or finances, violent invectives could be heard against the economists.” Such is ever the reception accorded men who bear unwelcome or inconvenient truths. …
Then came 1793—Year One; the year of la Terreur. Having tried inflation and legal coercion, they would try terrorizing the population into accepting the plunging assignat at par, and producing and selling at a patriotic loss.
In March, the National Convention created the Orwellian-named Committee of Public Safety (another unfortunate American precedent), which was a kind of committee of terror, dedicated to expropriating and murdering those deemed to be “traitors” to France or enemies of la Revolution. In May, they passed le Maximum, imposing price ceilings on grain. It worsened the grain shortage. In June, they passed the Forced Loan, a progressive income tax, whose progressivity was progressively lowered to reach more and more citizens. They also passed increasingly draconian and deadly laws designed to force people to accept the assignats at par and forbidding them from exchanging them for anything less than their face value. In July, the Convention repudiated the first issue of interest-bearing assignats.
In August, trading (i.e. buying or selling) specie was prohibited. In September, the Convention passed the General Maximum, extending price ceilings to all foodstuffs, as well as firewood, coal, and other essentials. In that month, despite the deadly coercion, the assignat fell to 30 percent against gold. During 1793, the Convention issued 1,200 million assignats; in 1794, 3,000 million. Next came the deluge. In 1795, 33,000 million were printed, and in October, when a new government—the Directory—assumed power, the assignats’ purchasing power had fallen to almost nothing. On the black market, 600 francs of assignats traded for one gold franc. (Arthur Scott Trask. Inflation and the French Revolution. The Story of Monetary Catastrophe.)
The people and especially conservatives saw how the French Revolution only increased exploitation.
French revolution: before and after: satirical drawing by French draftsman Caran d’Ache, 1898, in the middle of the Dreyfus affair and the foundation of Action Française. Although the Ancien Régime is not shown as idyllic, the contemporary situation is shown as an increase of oppression, which technical improvements (notice the plowshare) don’t lighten, and to which financial capitalism (the banker with his top hat and his wallet), the Freemason (with his set square and plumb bob) and the Jew (with a curved nose) are contributors. (Wikipedia)
1799 Napoleon
The French Revolution created both economic and political chaos. Jews were worried that the conservative kings of Europe would together manage to invade France and restore Bourbon monarchy. Thus the Jews were eager to support a young Corsican general to become a dictator. The fact that Napoleon was not a Frenchman but a Corsican and an outsider especially encouraged Jews to support him. Soon Napoleon conquered half of Europe and everywhere erased all laws that discriminated against the Jews. Napoleon was the liberator of Jews. In fact, he was so Philo-Semite that he even tried to conquer and restore Palestine for the them.
Then Napoleon surprised the Jews even more. After saving France from foreign invasions he also saved the French economy. He understood that only with low taxes could he maintain his popularity among the people.
Once in power Napoleon ignored the constitution, which prohibited aggressive wars, and tried to fulfill his dreams of conquering Europe. Taxation was to be his Achilles’ heel. French peasants naively believed they were fighting to end taxation. As the emperor rode through the streets of Paris on his white horse, he was cheered with these words:
“Plus d’impots, a bas des riches, a bas la republique, vive l’Empereur!” (“No more taxes, down with the rich, down with the republic, long live the Emperor!”).
Napoleon could not, of course, end taxation, but any increases or new burdens were out of the question. (Impact of Taxes, p. 350)
Napoleon was also a hard-money man. He hated paper money and did something very unexpected. He returned France to the gold standard.
It took Napoleon to restore hard money to France. As First Consul (1801), he introduced the 20 franc gold piece and insisted that from thenceforth soldiers, contractors, and merchants would be paid only in gold, or its equivalent. The paper blizzard was over. As the Bank of England had suspended specie payments in 1797, the English government was thrown into consternation. Napoleon would go on to conquer most of the Continent while on the gold standard. His success gives the lie to generations of scholarly and academic excuse making that for all its pitfalls the assignat “saved” the Revolution. On the contrary, it helped bring on the Terror and set French progress back a generation. (Arthur Scott Trask. Inflation and the French Revolution. The Story of Monetary Catastrophe.)
Napoleon was a hard-money man also in other ways. He hated usury and financial speculation. When many people complained of Jewish usury and manipulation of the economy Napoleon was very sympathetic. However, he would not do anything about it because he did not want to upset the Jews. But then Napoleon became even more powerful. He destroyed all his opponents with brilliant military maneuvers in Austerlitz and Jena. So at the height of his power in 1808 Napoleon finally dared to move against the Jews. He gave his “Infamous Decree” where he limited Jewish usury and monopolistic practices. This totally enraged the Jews. Now many Jewish bankers started to seriously support the alliance against Napoleon.
Now Napoleon had a serious problem. He could not increase taxation nor could he get enough loans. How then to wage war? Simple. By plunder and military genius. However, that is not a good long-term strategy. It was only a matter of time before he would loose.
The basic taxes Napoleon did develop were sensible and equitable as a whole, but they could not sustain his military adventures. In the end, Napoleon tried to run his armies on plunder, which meant he could not sustain defeats. Without a solid revenue base, Waterloo at some place was inevitable. In short, Napoleon’s downfall was brought about by Britain’s newly invented income tax and by his determination to carry on costly military ventures without an adequate tax system. Almost any solid tax system would have beaten Napoleon. (The Impact of Taxes, p. 351)
Once Napoleon was defeated in Waterloo the Bourbons cancelled the Infamous Decree and allowed Jews to dominate the economy.
1814 Congress of Vienna
The Bourbons had now learned their lesson but during the Congress of Vienna the Jews were shocked to learn that the Austrian Prince Metternich stabbed the Jews in the back. Together with the Tsar and the Pope he created the Holy Alliance and helped restore most of the anti-Jewish laws in Europe. Especially the Pope was now totally hostile to Jews because he saw them as the source of statism, anti-Christianity and modernity. The Papal States became the center of anti-Jewish studies and propaganda for the next hundred years.
The Jews were disappointed with the decisions of the Congress of Vienna but on the other hand they knew they had still won. After all, they received the biggest prize of all: An international Jewish banking cartel led by the Rothschilds. Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s five sons now dominated banking in the five leading capitals of Europe: London, Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt and Naples.
Before the Church had protested that the Jews were financing different sides of Gentile conflicts and thus benefited from wars and other conflicts. The Jews had countered by claiming that the Court Jews did not network but genuinely defended their kings they served. Now the Jews did not even bother to explain why it was good for Gentiles for one Jewish family to finance all sides of Gentile conflicts.
The Rothschilds were now so powerful that they could openly flaunt their riches and power. It was only a matter of time before the Jewish money power would be able to eradicate all anti-Jewish laws and dominate Europe.
In the decades after the war, governments became increasingly dependent upon foreign borrowing—an activity that the Rothschilds came to dominate. Between 1818 and 1832, Nathan Rothschild handled 39% of the loans floated in London by such governments as Austria, Russia and France. Similarly, the Vienna and Paris branches of the family raised money and sold bonds for the Hapsburgs, Bourbons, Orleanists, and Bonaparts. By mid-century, the entire European state system was dependent upon the international financial network dominated by the Rothschilds. (Fatal Embrace. p. 32)
CONTINUED IN PART III