taxes. The Temple in fact constituted an imperium in imperio that threatened not only the royal authority but the whole social system. An important light is thrown on the situation by M. Funck-Brentano in this passage:
As the Templars had houses in all countries, they practised the financial operations of the international banks of our times; they were acquainted with letters of change, orders payable at sight, they instituted dividends and annuities on deposited capital, advanced funds, lent on credit, controlled private accounts, undertook to raise taxes for the lay and ecclesiastical seigneurs.<sup></sup>
Through their proficiency in these matters--acquired very possibly from the Jews of Alexandria whom they must have met in the East--the Templars had become the "international financiers" and "international capitalists" of their day; had they not been suppressed, all the evils now denounced by Socialists as peculiar to the system they describe as "Capitalism"--trusts, monopolies, and "corners"--would in all probability have been inaugurated during the course of the fourteenth century in a far worse form than at the present day, since no legislation existed to protect the community at large. The feudal