A Conspiracy of Paper

I mean no disrespect to the gentlemen of the bench, but it is no secret that our system of justice, praised throughout Europe for its severity and its swiftness, is a terrible and fearful thing, and no man, guilty or innocent, wishes to stand before it.

We are all driven by our passions, and our task is to know when to submit to them and when to resist.

Proximity, I have learned, is often as effective as violence.

He seemed a man whose youthful promise had yielded nothing but the feelings of failure that come with the advance of age. It is this moment in life, when the bounty of the future becomes the drudgery of the present, that all men fear, myself included, and for that reason I immediately felt a sympathy for this man.

I fear we face a new kind of man along with this new kind of affluence. When lands meant wealth, men could perhaps have enough. Too much land was difficult to govern. But with paper money, more is simply more. In France, you know, where they suffer from their own financial mania, they have a word - the millionaire - to denote men whose wealth is measured in the millions. Millions. It is inconceivable, but there are more than a few men who hold this title.

believe you have struck upon the problems of conspiracies. There are men who wish to keep you from uncovering the truth about this particular matter, but there are others who are only privately villainous and have their own little truths to hide. When you confront a conspiracy it becomes monstrous hard to distinguish between wretched villainy and ordinary, common lies.

over the last decade I had little

The harm is in whom this system makes powerful. If value is no longer vested in gold, but in the promise of gold, then the men who make the promises hold ultimate power. If money and gold are one and the same, then gold defines value, but if money and paper are the same, then value is based upon nothing at all.

Good Gad, Weaver. That look upon your face is one of inspiration. I hardly know you any longer.

To Any and All Persons Who have bought stock from, or sold stock to, Mr. Martin Rochester You are asked to attend Mr. Kent’s Coffeehouse, in Peter Street, near Bloomsbury Square this Thursday between the hours of noon and three, at which time you will receive compensation for your time

Elias nodded. “You begin to understand the theory of probability,” he said. “From the general necessity of the existence of victims, you will find the particular of the villain.