How many students of history know that it was the international money-lenders in London, more than the tax on tea, who caused the American Revolution? Most of the following information is to be found in Lightning Over The Treasury Building* by John R. Elsom.
Some few years before the American Revolution, the Colonies were happy and prosperous. Benjamin Franklin, who later was one of the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, tells us that:
“Abundance reigned in the Colonies and there was peace in all their borders. A more happy and prosperous population could not perhaps be found on the globe. In every home there was comfort. The people generally were highly moral and knowledge was extensively diffused.”
Benjamin Franklin visited England as a representative of the Colonies, and there in rich Mother England he found poverty and want. He wondered how England, with all her riches, could be poor, and the young Colonies prosperous.
The officials in England asked Franklin how the Colonies managed to collect enough taxes to build poorhouses, and how they handled this terrible burden and curse of taking care of the poor. Franklin answered them:
"We have no poorhouses in the Colonies, and if we had we would have no one to put in them, as in the colonies there is not a single unemployed man, no poor and no vagabonds."
These officials, no doubt accustomed to looking at things in terms of financial limitations rather than physical realities, could not understand this, and they asked Franklin how he accounted for prosperity in the Colonies. He replied:
“That is simple. It is only because in the Colonies we issue our own money. It is called'Colonial Scrip'- and we issue it in the proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry." (See Senate No. 23, page 98, by Robert L. Owen, Former Chairman, Committee on Banking and Currency, U. S. Senate).
Robert L. Owen continues:
"It was not very long until this information was brought to the Rothschild's bank, and they saw that here was a Nation ready to be exploited; here was a Nation that had been setting up an example that they could issue their own money in place of the money coming through the banks. The Rothschild Bank caused a Bill to be introduced in the English Parliament, therefore, which provided that no Colony of England could issue its own money. They had to use English money. Consequently the Colonies were compelled to discard their 'Scrip' and mortgage themselves to the Bank of England in order to get money. For the first time in the history of the United States our money began to be based on debt."
We note that it was not really the "English", but the Rothschild interests, then centred in London, who now controlled the money and financial credit (life blood) of the Colonies. We note, too, that henceforth financial credit was not to be supplied according to the needs of the Colonists to facilitate production and consumption, but rather was it to be limited according to the selfish interests of these alien money-lenders.
Franklin states that one year after this dastardly action of the bankers, the streets in the Colonies were crowded with unemployed and beggars just as they were in England, because their money had been restricted — half of their money supply or medium of exchange taken away from them, as it is from us periodically during depressions. This, said Franklin, was the original cause of the war of the Revolution, adding:
"The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the Colonies their money, which created unemploymentand dissatisfaction."
Franklin is reported to have said:
“This was the straw that broke the camel's back”.
On page 30 of Sumner's History of American Currency we find:
"There can be no doubt that the bitterness engendered in this conflict was one great cause of the Revolution.”
John Twells, the English historian, wrote concerning “Colonial Scrip":
"This was the monetary system under which the American Colonies prospered to such an extent that Burke said of them,'Nothing in the history of the world is like their progress. It was a wise and beneficial system and its effects were most conductive to happiness of the people."
Thus do we see, in the history of the United States, how the application of a scientific financial system, built on Christian principles, brough peace and prosperity to the people. And we see, too, how the imposition of a debt-creating system based on usury led to poverty, misery, revolution and war.
The great features of the financial policy which brought prosperity were:
(1) The people, through their parliament, issued their own financial credit, and thus were without interest charges and mounting debtand taxes.
(2) Financial credit was issued in just the correct amount to "move all goods freely from the producers to the consumers." In other words, money was rightly considered as a medium of exchange or a 'claim' on goods and services; and parliament ensured that there were enough 'claims' in the pockets of the people to enable them to purchase their full production. Thus, what God and Science had made physically possible, was automatically financially possible.
The features of the money-lenders' policy imposed upon the Colonists, which brought poverty and war, included:
(1.) The people and their parliament had no effective control over the issue of their financial credit, and thus had to depend upon the banks and borrow, at interest, the financial credit or money necessary to carry on production, distribution and consumption...
(2) The volume of financial credit and money was now determined not by the needs of the consumers and the ability of the producers, not by the needs of trade and commerce, not by the goods and services for sale, not by physical realities — but by the decrees of money-lending institutions interested in perverting money from its rightful role into an instrument for gaining control of power and wealth.
It is to be regretted that in school today we learn nothing about the great motivating forces behind 'history'. We are shown the symptoms, as it were, but never the cause.
Most of the vital facts and information published in this journal are not taught in school. Our boys and girls grow into men and women, and have thrust into their hands the franchise, without ever having been taught the great fundamental truths essential for any sound decision.
Ours is the responsibility to carry this information, to carry the light, to our friends and neighbours; and then to demand from our public representatives reasonable results in accordance our will.
Use SOCIAL CREDIT in your educational missions. Pass it along to others. Introduce this article to all responsible men and women in your community. Urge them to become regular readers of SOCIAL CREDIT. Take their subscription and send it in for them.
Following the American Revolution the international money-lenders again stole away from the people control of financial credit. Presidents, such as Lincoln, who fought to regain control of financial policy were driven from public life, and some were assassinated. In future issues we hope to lay before you some of this important, and largely suppressed, information,
Aristotle said:
"Money exists not by nature but by law. The use of money was of necessity devised. From barter arose the use of money. For it is not everything which is naturally useful that is easy of carriage. For this reason men invented among themselves by way of exchange something they would mutually give and take."