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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 12 Num. 41
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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IGNATIUS DONNELLY & "CAESAR'S COLUMN"
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Hard-to-find books include
(1) *Seven Financial Conspiracies Which Have Enslaved the
American People* by S.E.V. Emery.
(2) *The Problem of Civilization Solved* by Mary E. Lease.
(3) *The Populist Movement* by Frank L. McVey.
(4) *Shylock: As Banker, Bondholder, Corruptionist, Conspirator*
by Gordon Clark.
My thanks to author Richard Hofstadter, author of *The Age of
Reform*, for tipping me to the above books by including them in
the source notes of his book.
Also included in source notes in Hofstadter's above-mentioned
book is mention of the book *Caesar's Column* by Ignatius
Donnelly. Donnelly's book =was= findable by me, not through the
local citizens' library, however, but through the University of
Illinois library located in the town where I live. BUT, the
above-mentioned hard-to-find books, numbered 1-4 above, are
VANISHED!! They (1-4 above) are tentatively assigned the status
of BANNED BOOKS.
-+- Ignatius Donnelly -+-
Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901), though he lived in the late 19th
century, was not a gunfighter. Since late-19th century America
is portrayed as if it were only gunfights in popular romance, you
might be surprised to know that there was this thing called
"populism" going on back then. Maybe you heard that word,
"populism," in 1996, when Pat Buchanan was scaring the bejeezus
out of the East Coast Demo-Publicans when the upstart
presidential candidate came from nowhere and scored major primary
victories. About then, those "nicey-nice boys" in their suits
and ties -- Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter "Waylon" Jennings
-- looked gravely into the cameras and "asked": "What is
populism?"
Ignatius Donnelly was one of those dreaded "populists" back in
the 19th century, back when it all began. Referred to in his
time as, "The Prince of Cranks," Donnelly now is totally
forgotten. But back in the 1850s, Donnelly then made the radical
move of joining the Republican party. (Back then, the Republican
party was radical.) He served three terms as a congressman, but
by then Donnelly had become too radical even for the Republicans
and they gave him the heave-ho. Donnelly battled "the railroads,
the banks, the traditional political parties, [and] the spreading
industrial trusts." [1].
At the People's Party convention at Omaha, on July 4, 1892,
Donnelly gave voice to popular discontent:
We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of
moral, political and material ruin. Corruption dominates
the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches
even the ermine on the bench [the judges]... The
newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public
opinion silenced... and the land concentrating in the hands
of the capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right
of organization for self-protection; imported pauperized
labor beats down their wages; a hireling army, unrecognized
by our laws, is established to shoot them down...
...A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on
two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the
world. If not met and overthrown at once it forbodes...
the establishment of an absolute despotism.
Among Ignatius Donnelly's books are included:
-- *Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World* (1882). Attempts to prove
that Plato's Atlantis is a "veritable history."
-- *Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel* (1883). A "worthy
predecessor of Immanuel Velikovsky's... *World's in Collision*,
which it in some ways anticipates." [2]
-- *The Great Cryptogram* (1888). Asserts that "Sir Francis
Bacon was the author of the plays usually attributed to
Shakespeare, and... that the plays themselves contain an
elaborate cipher devised by Bacon to establish his authorship to
future generations." [3]
-- *The American People's Money* (1895).
-- *The Cipher in the Plays, and on the Tombstone* (1899). A
further defense of his "Bacon is Shakespeare" theory.
-+- "Caesar's Column" -+-
Donnelly's book, *Caesar's Column* (1890), is one of the former
congressman's attempts to exposit his ideas through a work of
fiction. Walter B. Rideout, in his introduction to the 1960
reprinting of Donnelly's book, compares it to Aldous Huxley's