d and
universal plot of Wall Street to make perpetual the national debt, to
keep that debt the bottom fact in the banking system of the United
States, and to bull the unit of money and account until it shall be
worth four times as much, or perhaps ten times as much, as it was when
the bulk of the debt was contracted.

The history of this scheme in its true inwardness is the history of
Wall Street for the past thirty years. The details of the history
relate to such small circumstances as the transfer of the government
of the great Republic from the hands and control of the people to the
hands and control of the Street. Of course no such scheme as that
referred to could be carried into successful operation _unless_ the
national government could be delivered over to the keeping of the
Street and be locked up, as it were, in the same vault where the
national debt is deposited.

This feat, however, was easily accomplished. Wall Street reached out
its hand and plucked down the American eagle from his perch. Wall
Street got possession of the government. The _coup_ was accomplished
while the nation was asleep--else it never could have been
accomplished. Wall Street climbed the Tarpeian rock in the night, and
no goose cackled to give the alarm. Columbia had gone to bed. The
keeper of her treasure-house had already given the key to the enemy.
The keeper of the treasury was a _part_ of the enemy. He gave up both
citadel and city. In the morning the walls were placarded with lying
posters which said that the delivery of the government into the hands
of the Hessians had been rendered necessary in order "to preserve the
national honor!" It was done in order to keep faith with those
benevolent patriots who had bought the debt of the nation at less than
fifty cents to the dollar, and who, not satisfied with bringing it to
par, were now engaged in the honorable work of making it worth two
hundred cents to the dollar. The fact that the industries of the
people would be crushed and the people themselves be reduced to
poverty by the transfer of the national sovereignty from the capitol
to the stock exchange was nothing in comparison with the "preservation
of national honor."

The scheme was carried out. The methods by which it was carried out
constitute the subject-matter of the true history of Wall Street
during the past generation. Wall Street, from being a financial
organization, became a political power. It took full possession of