markellion's video: English revolution African holocaust

More on Debt and the slave trade (previous video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IrTc_spMy4 The Encyclopedia Americana: a library of universal knowledge, Volume 13 (written in 1919) http://books.google.com/books?id=PWYMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA243&dq= =onepage&q=&f=false "Out of annual revenue the authorities may generally spend as much as they please, the unpopularity of rates being regarded as a sufficient safeguard against extravagance. In regard to one expenditure only, that for poor relief, the central government attempts to prevent too much being spent, at any rate in one or two directions, such as relief to persons not required to enter the workhouse and relief to the able bodied. In other matters the influence of the central government, when exercised, is almost always in favor of increased expenditure. The threat of "withdrawal of the grant* in respect of a particular school is used every day by inspectors of the central board of education in order to compel a local authority to spend more. The central government appoints officers to audit the accounts of the greater number of local authorities, but the auditors of the municipal boroughs (which include all the great cities) in England are elected, under the Municipal Corporations Act of 1832, by the ratepayers. This election is almost always a farce, and the more important city councils have had to provide a proper audit in addition to the one thus provided by law. 21. BANKING. Banking in Great Britain as now carried on is the product of a continuous process of evolution; it owes very little to external influences, and can only be properly understood in the light of the study of its earlier developments.... There are few evidences of banking in the modern sense of the term in England before the 17th century. In the Middle Ages the bankers were mainly money changers and money lenders; they dealt in coin, not in credit The Italian colony of the Lombards, however, who gave their name to Lombard street, seem to have been well acquainted with the use of bills of exchange, and the banking business of the country was chiefly in their hands after the expulsion of the Jews at the end of the 13th century. During the 16th century, however, the power of the colonies of foreign merchants in London rapidly declined, ending in the breaking up of the German colony in the Steelyard by Queen Elizabeth. In the 17th century it became customary for the wealthier classes to intrust their spare cash to the keeping of the London goldsmiths, a body of men whose occupation inspired the necessary confidence. The transition from goldsmith to banker was a natural and easy one, and the goldsmiths' "cash notes" gradually acquired a degree of negotiability. Some of the existing London private bankers find their origin in the goldsmiths of the latter half of the 17th century. Outside London the early type of country bankers was evolved from the class of substantial merchants. Thomas Smith of Nottingham, for instance, who is the earliest country banker of whom we have any record, and who certainly carried on business as early as 1688, originally combined the business of a mercer with that of a banker. Owing to the unsatisfactory condition of the public finances under the Stuarts, there was no opening for a public bank such as existed in Amsterdam and other European centres of industry. But the Revolution of 1688 saw the control of the national expenditure pass from the Crown to Parliament. The national credit became, for the first time, an important factor in our economic development, and showed itself in the growth of a national debt. The use of credit spread rapidly and this led to the development of modern banking. To the efforts of William Paterson was due the establishment in 1694 of the Bank of England, founded under the wing of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Montague, with the object of lending the whole of its capital, £1,200.000, to the state. The Bank of England.—The Bank of England is the pivot round which centers the whole of modern banking in the United Kingdom. In no other country, whether in Europe or America, does a bank occupy quite an analogous position. It is not a state bank in the strict sense of the term; its capital is held privately, and its management is not in any way directly or indirectly controlled by the state. On the other hand, during its whole history, it has been more or less under the protection of the state; its operations have been on occasion dictated by the state; its development has been marked by successive loans of its capital to the state in return for the confirmation or extension of its privileges, and it still continues to exercise powers and owe responsibilities delegated by the State."