MADE US AT ONCE THE PITY AND PAWNS OF THE WORLD
Aug 27th, 2012 by Conor McCabe
Arrived in the post today, €25 via abebooks - got as far as the fourth page and already hitting gems…
From the evidence of the Irish Farmers’ Protection Association to the Currency Commission, 5 July 1935 [on the link with Sterling and the lack of an independent currency for Éire]: -
The bankers [and their speeches] about budgets, gold standards, balance of trade, recovery, international finance, peace of the world, favoured-nation treatment and the myriad of other stock-in-trade phrases of this ilk are too threadbare and transparent to hoodwink or deceive any intelligent thinking Irishman of woman today…
The odious banking, currency and credit systems under which we have been forced to exist distorted all our finer feelings and natural characteristics, took us, as it were, out of our own natural selves, inspired us with vice and made us at once the pity and pawns of the world.” (pp.791-92)
