Blood money

“ This in itself shows, that it is not revenge, but restitution, that is sought after by the goel; that he is not the blood-avenger, but the blood-balancer.
It is true that, still, in some instances, all money payment for blood is refused; but the avowed motive in such a case is the holding of life as above price—the very idea which the Mosaic law emphasized. Thus Burton tells of the excited Bed ́ween mother who dashes the proffered blood-money to the ground, swearing “by Allah, that she will not eat her son’s blood.” ”

“ In the mornings I spit blood until I can breathe no more. But if I were told that I will be spared a fourth flogging only by shaking hands with a chief of the detective police, I would refuse to do it!
"And then the newspapers say that we took from these hands Judas-money, dripping with human blood. No, gentlemen, it is a slander which stabs our very soul, and inflicts insufferable pain. Not money, nor threats, nor promises will suffice to make us mercenary murderers of our brethren, nor accomplices with them." ”

“ The smell of blood-money brought out a number of scoundrels who for a few pounds were only too ready to swear away the life of any man, and it was notorious that numbers of poor fellows were condemned in this way. ”

“ And that disturbance would have continued, if government had held the money in its own hands, or even applied it to general purposes, the only difference being, that in such a case there would have been land without either capital or labour. To use their own illustration, if the blood all goes to the head' a man dies just as much as if he was bled to death—the only difference being between apoplexy and inanition. ”

“ In point of fact, "blood-money" is paid to the family of the deceased person, and to save his life from their vengeance a homicide frequently becomes a mendicant on the other side of the mountains till he can gain the required sum. ”

“ The relatives may then accept so much blood-money as compensation, or [68] may kill the man in any way they like. Sometimes the haggling among the relatives about accepting the blood-money offered by the murderer and his friends, some being in favour of accepting the money, and others in favour of death, is continued even under the scaffold, where the condemned one stands ready pinioned, and with the rope round his neck, and after, perhaps, an hour or so of wrangling, it ends in the decision that the man must suffer death, and then the rope is seized and the man hauled up. ”

“ When these great lenders of blood-money, like the Rothschilds, have loaned vast sums in this way, for purposes of murder, to an emperor or a king, they sell out the bonds taken by them, in small amounts, to anybody, and everybody, who are disposed to buy them at satisfactory prices, to hold as investments. ”

“ The payment of blood-money was a common custom among the Teutons, and so little distinction was made between greater and lesser crime that, while a murderer could commonly buy off the relatives of his victim, the petty thief often suffered death or mutilation for his offence. ”

“ In a new and growing country, it should be characterized by that steady accretion that characterizes the increase in the quantity of blood in the human body as it progresses from infancy to maturity. It is no more unreasoning, empirical, or unscientific to be alternately withdrawing blood from, and injecting blood into, a human body than to be constantly contracting and expanding the money volume of the country. And as activity of circulation of the blood is essential to the health of the body, so activity of circulation in money is indispensable to the well-being of society. ”

“ When this grows to such an extent as to require all or most of the money in the country to pay the interest on debts, then commerce slackens and there is little or no money among the people except as loaned out by the banks and others whose business it is to loan money. They are dealing in the blood of commerce, and when they take it from the arteries of commerce there is commercial sickness and distress. ”

“ Judas is the mysterious victim sacrificed to the curse of money. Money carries with it, together with the filth of the hands which have clutched and handled it, the inexorable contagion of crime. Among the unclean things which men have manufactured to defile the earth and defile themselves, money is perhaps the most unclean. These counters of coined metal 203which pass and repass every day among hands still soiled with sweat or blood, worn by the rapacious fingers of thieves, of merchants, of misers ”

“ For she well knew that ruin was inevitable, that the day of massacre would come, when there would be dead to eat, shares to pick up for nothing, from amid the mire and the blood. And Saccard, who even then was revolving a grand banking project in his mind, gave a slight shudder, and felt a presentiment at sight of that bag, that charnel-house, as it were, of depreciated stock, into which passed all the dirty paper swept away from the Bourse. ”

“ I think it is in an old play that the remark has been made that 'Murder will out,' also that 'Blood will have blood.' Both remarks are perfectly correct; but there is another remark that might have been made with even greater truth, and that is 'Money will out.' You can't hide money—at least the average criminal can't. That's where he gives himself away. He can't keep his plunder to himself—the money burns—it burns—he must spend it. Some spend it on drink; some, begging your pardon, Madam—spend it on ladies; some, the weakest of the lot, spend it on clothes and hansom cabs ”

“ Neither can be effected, if the blood or money drawn from the veins or pockets of the one, should be infused into the veins or pockets of the other. That would only be the experiment of exchanging youth for decrepitude, by surrendering a vital principle. ”

“ All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything, greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop. ”

“ A still worse outgrowth was the increase of speculation and gambling. With the plethora of paper currency in 1791 appeared the first evidences of that cancerous disease which always follows large issues of irredeemable currency,—a disease more permanently injurious to a nation than war, pestilence or famine. For at the great metropolitan centers grew a luxurious, speculative, stock-gambling body, which, like a malignant tumor, absorbed into itself the strength of the nation and sent out its cancerous fibres to the remotest hamlets. ”

“ SCHURZ. I ask whether in his opinion what I have said about the evil influences of our irredeemable and depreciated currency is not substantially true; whether that kind of currency has or has not shown a tendency to engender unproductive enterprises, over-speculation, and gambling; the creation of fictitious values, an over-straining of the credit system, a general demoralization of business, not to speak of social life; a continual demand for more and more of such money, and so on; apt to lead finally to great breakdowns and ruinous disaster? ”

“ Like a poisonous drug in the human body, it permeates every vein, every artery, every fiber and filament of the industrial structure. The debtor is fighting for his life against an enemy he does not see, against an influence he does not understand. For, while his calculations were well and intelligently made, and the amount of his debts and the terms of his contracts remain the same, the weight of all his obligations has been increased by an insidious increase in the value of the money unit. ”

“ Being the heart, however corrupt, no law surgery may reach it. If Money were the hand of a people, or the fingers on that hand, then it might be dealt with. It could be statute-lanced or poulticed or even amputated, and no threat to life ensue. Money foresees this; and, with that lying cunning which is ever the scoundrel sword and shield of cowards, it declares itself to be the heart. Thus is it safeguarded against the honest least correction of communal saw and knife. Being the heart, its vileness may be deplored but cannot be mended. ”

“ Such fraudulent accumulations, in fact, make nations poorer by converting the profits of labour, the only fund for sustaining consumptions, into a dead capital. They are like the iron chest of misers, which locks up, and robs money of its utility in promoting exchanges and consumptions. ”

“ The financial policy of the general government ever controlled by capital against labor, has been the most gigantic imposition by financial jugglery that history has recorded, and has been effected chiefly by manipulation and contraction of the currency to make debts more oppressive, and during the war by depreciating the people’s money. ”

“ We spent much of our time in the sub-treasury and bank vaults watching new shades vainly clutching at the money stacks with their pale fingers.
“The insane strife of the hordes of mortals to see who can die beside the biggest gold pile has always been considered a rich joke in the spirit world, for when they come among us they are unable to bring any of it with them. The accumulation in the sub-treasury is very convenient for them to gloat over and it continues their worldly illusions perfectly. ”

“ He showed how, at six per cent. interest, all the wealth of the nation may pass into the hands of the money-lenders every sixteen years, and leave of the annual increase only enough to support the great mass of the people with a meager living. He showed how the bankers had conspired together to rob the nation in time of peril; how they had robbed the business men, robbed the masses, robbed everybody by their contraction of the currency and their thieving, unjust laws. ”

“ But, as in the last fatal stages of disease, this fatal influence of money has got into our brain and affected our heart. Like a usurper, it has occupied the throne of high social ideals, using every means, by menace and threat, to seize upon the right, and, tempted by opportunity, presuming to judge it. ”

“ Bank stock also boasts of the same merit, but it pretends that an abundance of money, and not the goad of taxation, is its cause. The first, by hiding the cause of the effect it claims, confesses its treachery not more conspicuously than the second, by pretending that it encourages industry by a superfluity of money. Are extortion and donation, a robber and a prodigal, equally encouragers of industry? ”

“ But suppose you needed another sort of help—instead of the strength of arm, the strength of my pocket? That would be all and that's what they all say. But why do they say it. Because the robber gangs want all the suckers to be honest and respect money. If the suckers weren't honest and didn't respect money, where would the robbers be? Don't you see? The robbers don't deal in arm-holds; they deal in dollars. Therefore arm-holds are just common and ordinary, while dollars are sacred—so sacred that you didn't let me lend you a hand with a few. ”

“ In all human societies where money has been used there has also been the oppression by the strong and the armed of the weak and the defenceless; and wherever there was oppression, there the standard of value, money, whatever it consisted of, cattle or hides, skin or metals, must have unavoidably lost its significance as a medium of exchange, and received the meaning of a ransom from violence.
There is no doubt that money does possess the inoffensive properties which science enumerates; but it would have these properties only in a society in which there was no violence,—in an ideal state. ”

“ At such times the need of leaning upon the solid foundation of metallic currency is felt with a new intensity; and when, with a blindness resulting from overconfidence, this need has been neglected, when, from a disregard of the functions of money, a crisis is brought about by the violent rupture of the equilibrium of credit, gold at once resumes its rights, is sought for on all sides, and, according to the seriousness of the offence, exacts complete amends, with the honors of a premium as high as it may choose to make. ”

“ See to it that bank employees be not infected with it. It is germinated in the rush of financial affairs—is given life through the constant handling of immense sums of money. Afflicted by the “callousitis,” the bank employee, who once realized a keen responsibility in handling one dollar of another’s money intrusted to his care, feels no added responsibility when he, through promotion perhaps, is called upon to manipulate a million dollars. In other words, he becomes callous to the fact that large sums of money are passing through his hands. ”

“ So it would be if only one fact of violence of one man over another appeared in the midst of perfectly free relations; but now, when the accumulated money has passed through centuries of most various forms of violence, when these acts of violence continue under other forms; when money itself by its accumulation creates violence,—which is recognized by everybody,—when the direct products of labour constitute only a small part of money made up of all sorts of violence,—to assert now that money represents the work of its owner is an obvious error, or an open lie. ”