"Unlike the Nile, wherever they pass they render the soil dry and barren. The treasures of the world flow into their cellars, and there remain...They have not assumed the place of the old nobility, but have taken the latter into their service. Princes are their chamberlains, dukes open their doors, and marquises act as their equerries when they deign to ride.
John Ruskin on usury: "Financiers are the mischievous feudalism of the 19th century. A handful of men have invented distant, seductive loans, have introduced national debts in countries happily ignorant of them, have advanced money to unsophisticated Powers on ruinous terms, and then, by appealing to small investors all over the world, got rid of the bonds. Furthermore, with the difference between the advances and the sale of bonds, they caused a fall in the securities which they had issued, and, having sold at 80, they bought back at 10, taking advantage of the public panic. Again, with the money thus obtained, they bought up consciences, where consciences are marketable, and under the pretense of providing the country thus traded upon with new means of communication, they passed money into their own coffers. They have had pupils, imitators, and plagiarists; and at the present moment, under different names, the financiers rule the world, are a sore of society, and form one of the chief causes of modern crises." For the rest of it go here.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan wrote: “Give me but the liberty of the press. And I will give to the Minister a venal House of Peers. I will give him a corrupt and servile House of Commons. I will give him full swing of the patronage of office. I will give him the whole host of ministerial influence. I will give him all the power that place can confer upon him to purchase submission and overawe resistance. And yet armed with the liberty of the press, I will go forth to meet him undismayed. I will attack the mighty fabric of the mightier engine. I will shake down from its height corruption and bury it beneath the ruins of the abuse it was meant to shelter”.
And a small slice from Cecil Roth's A History of the Jews in England (TFC book archives):
"In the Dark Ages, the terms 'merchant' and 'Jew' were sometimes used, in western Europe, virtually as synonyms: and certain branches of trade and manufacture were almost exclusively in Jewish hands. But, as time went on, Gentile competition in these spheres became increasingly strong. The Italian maritime republics embarked upon commercial activities with a degree of cohesion, reinforced by political backing, which the Jews could not emulate. Trade was everywhere organized on a co-operative basis, and impregnated with a feeling of religious solidarity which left few loopholes for the unbeliever."
