236 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
236 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 12 Num. 45
|
|
=======================================
|
|
("Quid coniuratio est?")
|
|
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
=WHOSE= "LAW"?
|
|
==============
|
|
|
|
| "And the laws?" |
|
|
| |
|
|
| "WHOSE 'laws', Fulgor?" |
|
|
| (*Pedro Paramo* by Juan Rulfo) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The highwayman "infested human society at very early periods...
|
|
When such characters become numerous and confederate in large
|
|
numbers they are called brigands."
|
|
Piracy (armed robbery upon the seas) also has a long history.
|
|
The pirates were even sometimes secretly approved by their own
|
|
governments. "Letters of Marque" were "a license or
|
|
extraordinary commission, granted by the supreme power of one
|
|
state" which gave covert permission to certain pirates "to make
|
|
reprisals at sea" upon the subjects of rival governments.
|
|
Tacit sanction of piracy waned, and it was more or less gone
|
|
by the close of the 16th century. (Except in the Americas, where
|
|
it was a large problem until about the end of the 17th century.)
|
|
"But when piracy received its fatal blow at the close of the
|
|
sixteenth century, it was immediately succeeded at the opening of
|
|
the seventeenth by a still greater scourge, the corporation -- a
|
|
pirate in fact."
|
|
The corporation "sprang into existence bearing a commission
|
|
from the State, its creator, which authorized it to rob legally
|
|
both by sea and by land." The first great corporation was....
|
|
|
|
The English East India Company
|
|
|
|
This band of cut-throats was chartered by Queen Elizabeth in
|
|
1600. "Its accursed progeny have scourged the world for three
|
|
centuries... The history of this company is one of unparalleled
|
|
cruelty, pillage and conquest. It equipped fleets, patrolled the
|
|
seas with the British navy, made war, conquered provinces... To
|
|
protect the properties and privileges of the East India Company
|
|
Britain has waged war by land and by sea and shed the blood and
|
|
spent the treasure of her people."
|
|
|
|
Joint Stock Companies
|
|
|
|
As the profits of the East India Company catapulted into the
|
|
stratosphere, the "cupidity [greed] of all the surrounding
|
|
nations was wrought up to the highest pitch." These rival
|
|
nations each chartered their own companies for trade to the East
|
|
Indias. In England, there grew a fever to concoct similar
|
|
schemes. "Both sea and land were ransacked to find foothold for
|
|
corporate adventure... The rage for organizing corporations --
|
|
joint stock companies as they were generally called -- became
|
|
epidemic and spread far and wide. They extended to the trading
|
|
in wine, coal, salt, starch, dressed meats, beavers, belting,
|
|
bonelace, leather, pins and indeed to nearly all of the
|
|
necessaries of life."
|
|
In a speech given to Parliament, Sir John Culpepper had this
|
|
to say about the proliferating joint stock companies:
|
|
|
|
"They are a nest of wasps -- a swarm of vermin which have
|
|
overcrept the land. Like the frogs of Egypt, they have
|
|
gotten possession of our dwellings, and we have scarce a
|
|
room free from them."
|
|
|
|
Next in the list of brigands is....
|
|
|
|
The Bank of England
|
|
|
|
"The next great step towards the enslavement and degradation of
|
|
modern civilization through the agency of corporations, was taken
|
|
in the year 1694, when Charles Montague... after consultation
|
|
with King William and his ministers, introduced the bill to
|
|
incorporate The Bank of England." In July, 1694, in
|
|
consideration of a "loan" of 1.2 million British pounds to the
|
|
English government, a charter was issued to a group calling
|
|
themselves "The Governor and Company of the Bank of England."
|
|
The initial "loan" received by the British government has never
|
|
been repaid. As of 1892, the "charter has been eleven times
|
|
renewed, each in consideration of a fresh loan to the royal
|
|
treasury, and in fact the corporation [Bank of England] may be
|
|
regarded as existing in perpetuity. It has grown to be a part,
|
|
and indeed a very important part of the Government itself...
|
|
[The Bank of England] has grown to be the most powerful moneyed
|
|
institution on the globe. It has shaped the financial
|
|
institutions of all modern civilized nations and dictates the
|
|
fiscal policy of christendom... The ravages of piracy in its
|
|
palmiest days were mere passing trifles compared with the scourge
|
|
of general spoliation, bankruptcy and business death which this
|
|
Goliath among fiscal institutions can inflict and repeatedly has
|
|
inflicted upon the commerce of the world."
|
|
"Montague had charge of the bill to incorporate [The Bank of
|
|
England] while it was pending in Parliament, but the real
|
|
authorship of the measure is due to one William Patterson...
|
|
Upon the incorporation of the bank he became one of its original
|
|
directors for a short time, while Montague was made First Lord of
|
|
the Treasury... The name of Charles Montague will be forever
|
|
associated with three of the great commercial and political
|
|
factors of modern times -- the East India Company, which has
|
|
spawned its voracious progeny over all christendom; the Bank of
|
|
England, which was its off-shoot and complement, and the British
|
|
national debt upon which the bank is founded and which now exists
|
|
in perpetuity to curse mankind. The bank and the debt were
|
|
contemporaneous in origin; and the Sovereign power of the Kingdom
|
|
of Great Britain to issue its own money and to control the volume
|
|
thereof, was parted with in consideration of the trifling loan
|
|
heretofore mentioned. The bank attends to all the fiscal
|
|
business of the Government."
|
|
|
|
Corporations Are Fictitious Entities
|
|
|
|
In the United States, the founding fathers and those who
|
|
influenced early legislation had passively accepted the dogma
|
|
that the power to create corporations was a prerogative of the
|
|
crown. "The transition was easy to that cognate fiction, that
|
|
the power to create incorporated trade associations was a
|
|
prerogative inherent in Government, without regard to whether it
|
|
was a monarchy or a republic."
|
|
"An incorporated trade association does not result from the
|
|
operation of any law of nature nor from the exercise of any of
|
|
the natural powers belonging to humanity. No number of men, in
|
|
the absence of statutory authority, can confer upon themselves
|
|
the powers and immunities of a corporation. They may associate
|
|
in business as partners, but the death of one of the members, in
|
|
the natural order of things, works a dissolution of the
|
|
association. Each member of the firm is personally responsible,
|
|
where company property cannot be found, for all the debts of the
|
|
co-partnership. If then it be true that a corporation does not
|
|
spring from any law of nature and cannot, in the absence of
|
|
statute, be brought into being by agreement among individuals,
|
|
whence is the boasted prerogative of the Crown or of the
|
|
legislature to create a corporation derived? How can man confer
|
|
upon the legislature a power, not even the germ of which exists
|
|
within himself? By nature he has the right to trade, to
|
|
associate and to organize Civil government; but he can never, in
|
|
business affairs, span the chasm of death, escape individual
|
|
responsibility, nor confer upon the legislature a power which he
|
|
does not himself possess. The corporation then, exists beyond
|
|
the domain of nature, is in conflict with the limitations of
|
|
human life, and is a remnant of usurpation and kingcraft which
|
|
lingers in modern society to make war upon the individual and to
|
|
eat up his substance. It exists by bold, daring usurpation and
|
|
not of right."
|
|
"The Government of the United States is one of enumerated
|
|
powers. The Constitution does not even vaguely hint at the power
|
|
of Congress to incorporate a trade association, or to grant a
|
|
charter for such purpose. Driven from the field of expressed
|
|
power, how can the authority of Congress be implied, when the
|
|
individuals from whom the Government was derived have no such
|
|
power to surrender and make no pretense even of doing so?"
|
|
|
|
The Bank of the United States
|
|
|
|
The bill incorporating The Bank of the United States was passed
|
|
on February 25, 1791. Its charter was renewed in 1818, during
|
|
the presidency of James Madison. The original charter and its
|
|
later renewal were both opposed by Thomas Jefferson. Under the
|
|
original charter, the U.S. government held only one-fifth of the
|
|
bank's stock. The charter granted in 1818 was only procured
|
|
after the government had received a "bonus" of $1.5 million from
|
|
the banksters. The Bank of the United States was finally
|
|
overthrown by President Andrew Jackson and his allies, after a
|
|
fierce battle, and its charter expired in 1836. But Thomas H.
|
|
Benton warned that "Jackson had not slain the United States Bank.
|
|
The bank was a wounded tigress. She had fled to the jungles but
|
|
would return again bringing her whelps with her."
|
|
"It is gratifying to know that all attempts to establish this
|
|
bank met with the unconquerable opposition of both Jefferson and
|
|
Jackson."
|
|
|
|
A Roaring Flood of Incorporations
|
|
|
|
Erroneous and ill-founded court decisions bolstered the false
|
|
idea that government, and especially that of a republic founded
|
|
on Natural Law, has the power to grant charters and create
|
|
corporations. Once the dam had been breached, incorporation laws
|
|
came flooding in like cockroaches riding twigs on a river -- for
|
|
example:
|
|
|
|
** The National Banking Acts
|
|
** The Acts Incorporating the Pacific Railroads
|
|
** The Act Incorporating Savings Banks in the District
|
|
of Columbia
|
|
** The Act to Incorporate the Nicaragua Canal Company
|
|
|
|
"Soon the whole country was submerged and swept beneath the
|
|
resistless current. For a full quarter of a century [ca.
|
|
1865-1890] the individual, as such, has been lost sight of in a
|
|
mad rush for corporate adventure... The man and the family have
|
|
been driven to the wall, the weak trampled under foot and the
|
|
choicest opportunities of the century showered upon chartered
|
|
combinations. Wealth, already possessing great advantages, is
|
|
not satisfied, and incorporates in order that it may have still
|
|
greater power. Every class of business, every calling,
|
|
everything except poverty, operates under a charter. The poor
|
|
must defend themselves as best they can, single-handed and
|
|
alone..." These monstrous combinations of wealth, these
|
|
Frankensteins operating outside Natural Law, these corporations,
|
|
"exist in every State in the Union, by thousands. They control
|
|
the business of every city, thrust their paid lobbyists within
|
|
the corridors and onto the floor of every legislative assembly,
|
|
and importune every city council for exemptions, concession and
|
|
privilege."
|
|
|
|
[Source: *A Call To Action* by General James B. Weaver (1892).
|
|
Republished in 1974 by Arno Press.]
|
|
|
|
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
|
|
|
|
For related stories, visit:
|
|
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those
|
|
of Conspiracy Nation, nor of its Editor in Chief.
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
New mailing list: leave message in the old hollow tree stump.
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Want to know more about Whitewater, Oklahoma City bombing, etc?
|
|
(1) telnet prairienet.org (2) logon as "visitor" (3) go citcom
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
|
|
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
|
|
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|