instruction. For these discourses were full of the most refined and
strained morality, and florid paintings of Utopian felicity, in a
state where all are Brothers and citizens of the world. But alas!
these wire-drawn principles seem to have had little influence on
the hearts, even of those who could best display their beauties.
Read the tragedies of Voltaire, and some of his grave performances
in prose--What man is there who seems better to know his Master's
will? No man expresses with more propriety, with more exactness,
the feelings of a good mind. No man seems more sensible of the
immutable obligation of justice and of truth. Yet this man, in
his transactions with his booksellers, with the very men to whom
he was immediately indebted for his affluence and his fame, was
repeatedly, nay incessantly, guilty of the meanest, the vilest
tricks. When he sold a work for an enormous price to one bookseller,
(even to Cramer, whom he really respected,) he took care that a
surreptitious edition should appear in Holland, almost at the same
moment. Proof-sheets have been traced from Ferney to Amsterdam. When
a friend of Cramer's expostulated with Voltaire on the injustice of
this conduct, he said, grinning, _Oh le bon Cramer--eh bien--il_
_n'a que d' etre du parti_--he may take a share--he will not give
me a livre the less for the first piece I offer him. Where shall
we see more tenderness, more honour, more love of every thing that
is good and fair, than in Diderot's _Pere de Famille_?--Yet this
man did not scruple to sell to the Empress of Russia an immense
library, which he did not possess, for an enormous price, having
got her promise that it should remain in his possession in Paris
during his life. When her ambassador wanted to see it, after a year
or two's payments, and the visitation could be no longer staved off,
Diderot was obliged to set off in a hurry, and run through all the
booksellers shops in Germany, to help him to fill his empty shelves.
He had the good fortune to save appearances--but the trick took air,
because he had been niggardly in his attention to the ambassador's
secretary. This, however, did not hinder him from honouring his
Imperial pupil with a visit. He expected adoration, as the light of
the world, and was indeed received by the Russian courtiers with
all the childish fondness that they feel for every Parisian mode.
But they did not understand him, and as he did not like to lose
money at play, they did not long court his company. He found his
pupil too clear sighted. _Ces philosophes_, said she, _sont beaux,
vús de loin; mais de plus prés, le diamant parait crystal_. He
had contrived a poor story, by which he hoped to get his daughter
married in parade, and portioned by her Majesty--but it was seen
through, and he was disappointed.
When we see the inefficacy of this refined humanity on these two
apostles of philosophical virtue, we see ground for doubting of
the propriety and expediency of trusting entirely to it for the
peace and happiness of a state, and we should be on our guard
when we listen to the florid speeches of the Brother Orator, and
his congratulations on the emancipation from superstition and
oppression, which will in a short time be effectuated by the
_Chevaliers Bienfaisants_, the _Philalethes_, or any other sect of
cosmo-political Brethren.
I do not mean by all this to maintain, that the Mason Lodges were
the sole corrupters of the public mind in France.--No.--In all
nations that have made much progress in cultivation, there is a
great tendency to corruption, and it requires all the vigilance
and exertions of magistrates, and of moral instructors, to prevent
the spreading of licentious principles and maxims of conduct. They
arise naturally of themselves, as weeds in a rich soil; and, like
weeds, they are pernicious, only because they are, where they should
not be, in a cultivated field. Virtue is the cultivation of the
human soul, and not the mere possession of good dispositions; all
men have these in some degree, and occasionally exhibit them. But
virtue supposes exertion; and, as the husbandman must be incited to
his laborious task by some cogent motive, so must man be prompted
to that exertion which is necessary on the part of every individual
for the very existence of a great society: For man is indolent,
and he is luxurious; he wishes for enjoyment, and this with little
trouble. The less fortunate envy the enjoyments of others, and
repine at their own inability to obtain the like. They see the idle
in affluence. Few, even of good men, have the candour, nay, I may
call it the wisdom, to think on the activity and the labour which
had procured those comforts to the rich or to their ancestors; and
to believe that they are idle only because they are wealthy, but
would be active if they were needy.--Such spontaneous reflexions
cannot be expected in persons who are engaged in unceasing labour,
to procure a very moderate share (in their estimation at least) of
the comforts of life. Yet such reflexions would, in the main, be
just, and surely they would greatly tend to quiet the minds of the
unsuccessful.
This excellent purpose may be greatly forwarded by a national
establishment for moral instruction and admonition; and if the
public instructors should add all the motives to virtuous moderation
which are suggested by the considerations of genuine religion,
every advice would have a tenfold influence. Religious and moral
instructions are therefore, in their own nature, unequivocal
supports to that moderate exertion of the authority arising from
civil subordination, which the most refined philanthropist or
cosmo-polite acknowledges to be necessary for the very existence
of a great and cultivated society. I have never seen a scheme of
Utopian happiness that did not contain some system of education, and
I cannot conceive any system of education of which moral instruction
is not a principal part. Such establishments are dictates of nature,
and obtrude themselves on the mind of every person who begins to
form plans of civil union. And in all existing societies they have
indeed been formed, and are considered as the greatest corrector
and soother of those discontents that are unavoidable in the minds
of the unsuccessful and the unfortunate. The magistrate, therefore,
whose professional habits lead him frequently to exert himself for
the maintenance of public peace, cannot but see the advantages of
such stated remembrancers of our duty. He will therefore support and
cherish this public establishment, which so evidently assists him in
his beneficent and important labours.
But all the evils of society do not spring from the discontents
and the vices of the poor. The rich come in for a large and a
conspicuous share. They frequently abuse their advantages. Pride
and haughty behaviour on their part rankle in the breasts, and
affect the tempers of their inferiors, already fretted by the
hardships of their own condition. The rich also are luxurious; and
are often needy. Grasping at every mean of gratification, they are
inattentive to the rights of inferiors whom they despise, and,
despising, oppress. Perhaps their own superiority has been acquired
by injustice. Perhaps most sovereignties have been acquired by
oppression. Princes and Rulers are but men; as such, they abuse many
of their greatest blessings. Observing that religious hopes make the
good resigned under the hardships of the present scene, and that
its terrors frequently restrain the bad; they avail themselves of
these observations, and support religion as an engine of state, and
a mean of their own security. But they are not contented with its
real advantages; and they are much more afraid of the resentment and
the crimes of the offended profligate, than of the murmurs of the
suffering worthy. Therefore they encourage superstition, and call to
their aid the vices of the priesthood. The priests are men of like
passions as other men, and it is no ground of peculiar blame that
they also frequently yield to the temptations of their situation.
They are encouraged to the indulgence of the love of influence
natural to all men, and they heap terror upon terror, to subdue
the minds of men, and darken their understandings. Thus the most
honourable of all employments, the moral instruction of the state,
is degraded to a vile trade, and is practised with all the deceit
and rapacity of any other trade; and religion, from being the honour
and the safeguard of nation, becomes its greatest disgrace and curse.
When a nation has fallen into this lamentable state, it is extremely
difficult to reform. Although nothing would so immediately and so
completely remove all ground of complaint, as the re-establishing
private virtue, this is of all others the least likely to be
adopted. The really worthy, who see the mischief where it actually
is, but who view this life as the school of improvement, and know
that man is to be made perfect through suffering, are the last
persons to complain. The worthless are the most discontented, the
most noisy in their complaints, and the least scrupulous about
the means of redress. Not to improve the nation, but to advance
themselves, they turn the attention to the abuses of power and
influence. And they begin their attack where they think the place
most defenceless, and where perhaps they expect assistance from a
discontented garrison. They attack superstition, and are not at all
solicitous that true religion shall not suffer along with it. It is
not perhaps, with any direct intention to ruin the state, but merely
to obtain indulgence for themselves and the co-operation of the
wealthy. They expect to be listened to by many who wish for the same
indulgence; and thus it is that religious free-thinking is generally
the first step of anarchy and revolution. For in a corrupted state,
persons of all ranks have the same licentious wishes, and if
superstitious fear be really an ingredient of the human mind, it
requires some _struggle_ to shake it off. Nothing is so effectual as
mutual encouragement, and therefore all join against priest-craft;
even the rulers forget their interest, which should lead them to
support it. In such a state, the pure morality of true religion
vanishes from the sight. There is commonly no remains of it in the
religion of the nation, and therefore all goes together.
Perhaps there never was a nation where all these co-operating
causes had acquired greater strength than in France. Oppressions
of all kinds were at a height. The luxuries of life were enjoyed
exclusively by the upper classes, and this in the highest degree
of refinement; so that the desires of the rest were whetted to the
utmost. Religion appeared in its worst form, and seemed calculated
solely for procuring establishments for the younger sons of the
insolent and useless noblesse. The morals of the higher orders
of the clergy and of the laity were equally corrupted. Thousands
of literary men were excluded by their station from all hopes of
advancement to the more respectable offices in the church. These
vented their discontents as far as there was safety, and were
encouraged by many of the upper classes, who joined them in their
satires on the priesthood. The clergy opposed them, it is true,
but feebly, because they could not support their opposition by
examples of their own virtuous behaviour, but were always obliged
to have recourse to the power of the church, the very object of
hatred and disgust. The whole nation became infidel; and when in
a few instances a worthy Curé uttered the small still voice of
true religion, it was not heard amidst the general noise of satire
and reproach. The misconduct of administration, and the abuse of
the public treasures, were every day growing more impudent and
glaring, and exposed the government to continual criticism. But it
was still too powerful to suffer this to proceed to extremities;
while therefore infidelity and loose sentiments of morality passed
unpunished, it was still very hazardous to publish any thing against
the state. It was in this respect, chiefly, that the Mason Lodges
contributed to the dissemination of dangerous opinions, and they
were employed for this purpose all over the kingdom. This is not an
assertion hazarded merely on account of its probability. Abundant
proof will appear by and by, that the most turbulent characters in
the nation frequented the Lodges. We cannot doubt, but that under
this covert they indulged their factious dispositions; nay, we shall
find the greatest part of the Lodges of France, converted, in the
course of a very few weeks, into corresponding political societies.
But it is now time to turn our eyes to the progress of Free Masonry
in Germany and the north of Europe; there it took a more serious
turn. Free Masonry was imported into Germany somewhat later than
into France. The first German Lodge that we have any account of is
that at Cologne, erected in 1716, but very soon suppressed. Before
the year 1725 there were many, both in Protestant and Catholic
Germany. Those of Wetzlar, Frankfort on the Mayne, Brunswick, and
Hamburg, are the oldest, and their priority is doubtful. All of
them received their institution from England, and had patents from
a mother Lodge in London. All seem to have got the mystery through
the same channel, the banished friends of the Stuart family. Many of
these were Catholics, and entered into the service of Austria and
the Catholic princes.
The true hospitality, that is no where more conspicuous than in the
character of the Germans, made this institution a most agreeable
and useful passport to these gentlemen; and as many of them were
in military stations, and in garrison, they found it a very easy
matter to set up Lodges in all parts of Germany. These afforded a
very agreeable pastime to the officers, who had little to occupy
them, and were already accustomed to a subordination which did not
affect their vanity on account of family distinctions. As the Ensign
and the General were equally gentlemen, the allegory or play of
universal Brotherhood was neither novel nor disgusting. Free Masonry
was then of the simplest form, consisting of the three degrees of
Apprentice, Fellow-craft, and Master. It is remarkable, that the
Germans had been long accustomed to the word, the sign, and the
gripe of the Masons, and some other handicraft trades. In many
parts of Germany there was a distinction of operative Masons into
Wort-Maurers and Schrift-Maurers. The Wort-Maurers had no other
proof to give of their having been regularly brought up to the trade
of builders, but the word and signs; the Schrift-Maurers had written
indentures to shew. There are extant and in force, borough-laws,
enjoining the Masters of Masons to give employment to journeymen
who had the proper words and sign. In particular it appears, that
some cities had more extensive privileges in this respect than
others. The word given at Wetzlar, the seat of the great council of
revision for the empire, entitled the possessor to work over the
whole empire. We may infer from the processes and decisions in some
of those municipal courts, that a master gave a word and token for
each year's progress of his apprentice. He gave the word of the
incorporated Imperial city or borough on which he depended, and
also a word peculiar to himself, by which all his own pupils could
recognise each other. This mode of recognisance was probably the
only document of education in old times, while writing was confined
to a very small part of the community. When we reflect on the nature
of the German empire, a confederation of small independent states,
we see that this profession cannot keep pace with the other mechanic
arts, unless its practitioners are invested with greater privileges
than others. Their great works exceed the strength of the immediate
neighbourhood, and the workmen must be brought together from a
distance. Their association must therefore be more cared for by the
public.[3]
[3] Note. The Wort or Gruss-Maurer were abolished by an Imperial
edict in 1731, and none were intitled to the privileges of the
corporation but such as could shew written indentures.
When English Free Masonry was carried into Germany, it was
hospitably received. It required little effort to give it
respectability, and to make it the occupation of a gentleman, and
its secrets and mysteries were not such novelties as in France.
It spread rapidly, and the simple topic of Brotherly love was
sufficient for recommending it to the honest and hospitable Germans.
But it soon took a very different turn. The German character is the
very opposite of frivolity. It tends to seriousness, and requires
serious occupation. The Germans are eminent for their turn for
investigation; and perhaps they indulge this to excess. We call them
plodding and dull, because we have little relish for enquiry for its
own sake. But this is surely the occupation of a rational nature,
and deserves any name but stupidity. At the same time it must be
acknowledged, that the spirit of enquiry requires regulation as
much as any propensity of the human mind. But it appears that the
Germans are not nice in their choice of their objects; it appears
that singularity, and wonder, and difficulty of research, are to
them irresistible recommendations and incitements. They have always
exhibited a strong predilection for every thing that is wonderful,
or solemn, or terrible; and in spite of the great progress which
men have made in the course of these two last centuries, in the
knowledge of nature, a progress too in which we should be very
unjust if we did not acknowledge that the Germans have been
generally in the foremost ranks, the gross absurdities of magic,
exorcism, witchcraft, fortune-telling, transmutation of metals,
and universal medicine, have always had their zealous partizans,
who have listened with greedy ears to the nonsense and jargon of
fanatics and cheats; and though they every day saw examples of many
who had been ruined or rendered ridiculous by their credulity, every
new pretender to secrets found numbers ready to listen to him, and
to run over the same course.
Free Masonry, professing mysteries, instantly roused all these
people, and the Lodges appeared to the adventurers who wanted
to profit by the enthusiasm or the avarice of their dupes, the
fittest places in the world for the scene of their operations.
The Rosycrucians were the first who availed themselves of the
opportunity. This was not the Society which had appeared formerly
under that name, and was now extinct, but a set of Alchymists,
pretenders to the transmutation of metals and the universal
medicine, who, the better to inveigle their votaries, had mixed
with their own tricks a good deal of the absurd superstitions of
that sect, in order to give a greater air of mystery to the whole,
to protract the time of instruction, and to afford more room for
evasions, by making so many difficult conditions necessary for
perfecting the grand work, that the unfortunate gull, who had thrown
away his time and his money, might believe that the failure was
owing to his own incapacity or unfitness for being the possessor of
the grand secret. These cheats found it convenient to make Masonry
one of their conditions, and by a small degree of art, persuaded
their pupils that they were the only true Masons. These Rosycrucian
Lodges were soon established, and became numerous, because their
mysteries were addressed, both to the curiosity, the sensuality, and
the avarice of men. They became a very formidable band, adopting
the constitution of the Jesuits, dividing the Fraternity into
circles, each under the management of its own superior, known to
the president, but unknown to the individuals of the Lodges. These
superiors were connected with each other in a way known only to
themselves, and the whole was under one General. At least this is
the account which they wish to be believed. If it be just, nothing
but the absurdity of the ostensible motives of their occupations
could have prevented this combination from carrying on schemes big
with hazard to the peace of the world. But the Rosycrucian Lodges
have always been considered by other Free Masons as bad Societies,
and as gross schismatics. This did not hinder, however, their
alchymical and medical secrets from being frequently introduced into
the Lodges of simple Free Masonry; and in like manner, exorcism,
or ghost-raising, magic, and other gross superstitions, were often
held out in their meetings as attainable mysteries, which would
be immense acquisitions to the Fraternity, without any necessity
of admitting along with them the religious deliriums of the
Rosycrucians.
In 1743, Baron Hunde, a gentleman of honourable character and
independent fortune, was in Paris, where he said he had got
acquainted with the Earl of Kilmarnock and some other gentlemen who
were about the Pretender, and learned from them that they had some
wonderful secrets in their Lodges. He was admitted, through the
medium of that nobleman, and of a Lord Clifford, and his Masonic
patent was signed _George_ (said to be the signature of Kilmarnock).
Hunde had attached himself to the fortunes of the Pretender,
in hopes (as he says himself) of rising in the world under his
protection. The mighty secret was this. "When the Order of Knights
Templars was abolished by Philip the Fair, and cruelly persecuted,
some worthy persons escaped, and took refuge in the Highlands of
Scotland, where they concealed themselves in caves. These persons
possessed the true secrets of Masonry, which had always been in that
Order, having been acquired by the Knights, during their services
in the East, from the pilgrims whom they occasionally protected
or delivered. The _Chevaliers de la Rose-Croix_ continued to have
the same duties as formerly, though robbed of their emoluments.
In fine, every true Mason is a Knight Templar." It is very true
that a clever fancy can accommodate the ritual of reception of the
_Chevalier de l'Epée_, &c. to something like the institution of the
Knights Templars, and perhaps this explanation of young Zerobabel's
pilgrimage, and of the rebuilding of the Temple by Ezra, is the most
significant explanation that has been given of the meagre symbols of
Free Masonry.
When Baron Hunde returned to Germany, he exhibited to some friends
his extensive powers for propagating this system of Masonry, and
made a few Knights. But he was not very active. Probably the failure
of the Pretender's attempt to recover the throne of his ancestors
had put an end to Hunde's hopes of making a figure. In the mean
time Free Masonry was cultivated with zeal in Germany, and many
adventurers found their advantage in supporting particular schisms.