Words&Dirt

“‘I am pleased by the cleverness of this trick that the English have played, to win wars against their betters by tinkering with what wealth is.  Because of it, I do not have to marry some inbred Bourbon, as poor Eliza did, and live out my days at Versailles, or in the Escorial.  But I am troubled by the uncertainty that all of this brings.  To paraphrase a wise man I know, it is as though a new System of the World has been drawn up.  And not by us but by some strange Natural Philosophers in a smoky room in London.  Now we must live by the rules of that System.  But it is not perfectly understood; and I fear that where the English have played a trick with money, to gain a temporary advantage, some other trick might be played upon them to reserve the field.”

––The System of the World, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 338