“In the impossibility in which our brothers and friends find themselves,
to say, as yet, their last word, it has been judged good and useful to
propagate the light everywhere, and to set in motion all that which
aspires to move. For this reason we do not cease to recommend to you,
to affiliate persons of every class to every manner of association, no
matter of what kind, _only provided that mystery and secrecy should
be the dominant characteristics_. All Italy is covered with religious
confraternities, and with penitents of divers colours. Do not fear to
slip in some of your people into the very midst of these flocks, led
as they are by a stupid devotion. Let our agents study with care the
_personnel_ of these confraternity men, and they will see that little
by little, they will not be wanting in a harvest. Under a pretext the
most futile, but never political or religious, create by yourselves,
or, better yet, cause to be created by others, associations, having
commerce, industry, music, the fine arts, etc., for object.[13] Reunite
in one place or another,—in the sacristies or chapels even,—these tribes
of yours as yet ignorant: put them under the pastoral staff of some
virtuous priest, well known, but credulous and easy to be deceived.
Then infiltrate the poison into those chosen hearts; infiltrate it in
little doses, and, as if by chance. Afterwards, upon reflection, you will
yourselves be astonished at your success.
“The essential thing is to isolate a man from his family, to cause him
to lose his morals. He is sufficiently disposed by the bent of his
character to flee from household cares, and to run after easy pleasures
and forbidden joys. He loves the long conversations of the _café_ and the
idleness of shows. Lead him along, sustain him, give him an importance
of some kind or other; discreetly teach him to grow weary of his daily
labours, and by this management, after having separated him from his wife
and from his children, and after having shown him how painful are all
his duties, you will then excite in him the desire of another existence.
Man is a born rebel. Stir up the desire of rebellion until it becomes a
conflagration, but in such a manner that the conflagration may not break
out. This is a preparation for the grand work that you should commence.
When you shall have insinuated into a few souls disgust for family and
for religion (the one nearly always follows in the wake of the other),
let fall some words from you, which will provoke the desire of being
affiliated to the nearest lodge. That vanity of the citizen or the
burgess, to be enfeodated to Freemasonry, is something so common and so
universal that it always makes me wonder at human stupidity. I begin to
be astonished at not seeing the entire world knock at the gates of all
the Venerables, and demand from these gentlemen the honour to be one of
the workmen chosen for the reconstruction of the temple of Solomon. The
prestige of the unknown exercises upon men a certain kind of power, that
they prepare themselves with trembling for the phantasmagoric trials of
the initiation and of the fraternal banquet.
“To find oneself a member of a lodge, to feel oneself called upon to
guard from wife and children, a secret which is never confided to you,
is for certain natures a pleasure and an ambition. The lodges, to-day,
can well create gourmands, they will never bring forth citizens. There is
too much dining amongst the right worshipful and right reverend brethren
of all the Ancients. But they form a place of depot, a kind of stud
(breeding ground), a centre through which it is necessary to pass before
coming to us. The lodges form but a relative evil, an evil tempered by
a false philanthropy, and by songs yet more false as in France. All
that is too pastoral and too gastronomic; but it is an object which it
is necessary to encourage without ceasing. In teaching a man to raise
his glass to his lips you become possessed of his intelligence and of
his liberty, you dispose of him, turn him round about, and study him.
You divine his inclinations, his affections, and his tendencies; then,
when he is ripe for us, we direct him to the secret society of which
Freemasonry can be no more than the antechamber.
“The _Alta Vendita_ desires, that under one pretence or another, as many
princes and wealthy persons as possible should be introduced into the
Masonic lodges. Princes of a sovereign house, and those who have not
the legitimate hope of being kings by the grace of God, all wish to be
kings by the grace of a Revolution. The Duke of Orleans is a Freemason,
the Prince of Carignan was one also. There are not wanting in Italy and
elsewhere, those amongst them, who aspire to the modest-enough honours
of the symbolic apron and trowel. Others of them are disinherited and
proscribed. Flatter all of their number who are ambitious of popularity;
monopolize them for Freemasonry. The _Alta Vendita_ will afterwards see
what it can do to utilize them in the cause of progress. A prince who has
not a kingdom to expect, is a good fortune for us. There are many of them
in that plight. Make Freemasons of them. The lodge will conduct them to
Carbonarism. A day will come, perhaps, when the _Alta Vendita_ will deign
to affiliate them. While awaiting they will serve as birdlime for the
imbeciles, the intriguing, the _bourgeoisie_, and the needy. These poor
princes will serve our ends, while thinking to labour only for their own.
They form a magnificent sign board, and there are always fools enough
to be found, who are ready to compromise themselves in the service of a
conspiracy, of which some prince or other seems to be the ringleader.
“Once that a man, that a prince, that a prince especially, shall have
commenced to grow corrupt, be persuaded that he will hardly rest upon
the declivity. There is little morality even amongst the most moral of
the world, and one goes fast in the way of that progress. Do not then be
dismayed to see the lodges flourish, while Carbonarism recruits itself
with difficulty. It is upon the lodges that we count to double our ranks.
They form, without knowing it, our preparatory novitiate. They discourse
without end upon the dangers of fanaticism, upon the happiness of social
equality, and upon the grand principles of religious liberty. They
launch amidst their feastings thundering anathemas against intolerance
and persecution. This is positively more than we require to make adepts.
A man imbued with these fine things is not very far from us. There is
nothing more required than to enlist him. The law of social progress is
there, and all there. You need not take the trouble to seek it elsewhere.
In the present circumstances never lift the mask. Content yourselves
to prowl about the Catholic sheepfold, but as good wolves seize in the
passage the first lamb who offers himself in the desired conditions. The
burgess has much of that which is good for us, the prince still more. For
all that, these lambs must not be permitted to turn themselves into foxes
like the infamous Carignan. The betrayal of the oath is a sentence of
death; and all those princes whether they are weak or cowardly, ambitious
or repentant, betray us, or denounce us. As good fortune would have it,
they know little, in fact not anything, and they cannot come upon the
trace of our true mysteries.
“Upon the occasion of my last journey to France, I saw with profound
satisfaction, that our young initiated exhibited an extreme ardour
for the diffusion of Carbonarism; but I also found that they rather
precipitated the movement a little. As I think, they converted their
religious hatred too much into a political hatred. The conspiracy
against the Roman See, should not confound itself with other projects.
We are exposed to see germinate in the bosom of secret societies, ardent
ambitions; and the ambitious, once masters of power, may abandon us. The
route which we follow is not as yet sufficiently well traced so as to
deliver us up to intriguers and tribunes. It is of absolute necessity
to de-Catholicise the world. And an ambitious man, having arrived at
his end, will guard himself well from seconding us. The Revolution
in the Church is the Revolution _en permanence_. It is the necessary
overthrowing of thrones and dynasties. Now an ambitious man cannot really
wish these things. We see higher and farther. Endeavour therefore to
act for us, and to strengthen us. Let us not conspire except against
Rome. For that, let us serve ourselves with all kinds of incidents; let
us put to profit every kind of eventuality. Let us be principally on
our guard against the exaggerations of zeal. A good hatred, thoroughly
cold, thoroughly calculated, thoroughly profound, is of more worth than
all these artificial fires and all these declamations of the platform.
At Paris they cannot comprehend this, but in London I have seen men who
seized better upon our plan, and who associated themselves to us with
more fruit. Considerable offers have been made to me. Presently we shall
have a printing establishment at Malta placed at our disposal. We shall
then be able with impunity, with a sure stroke, and under the British
flag, to scatter from one end of Italy to the other, books, pamphlets,
etc., which the _Alta Vendita_ shall judge proper to put in circulation.”
This document was issued in 1822. Since then, the instructions it gives
have been constantly acted upon in the lodges of Carbonarism, not only in
Italy but everywhere else. “Prowl about the Catholic sheepfold and seize
the first lamb that presents himself in the required conditions.” This,
and the order to get into Catholic confraternities, were as well executed
by the infamous Carey under the influence of “No. One,” as they were by
any Italian conspirator and assassin, under the personal inspiration of
_Piccolo Tigre_. Carey, the loud-spoken Catholic—the Catholic who had
Freemason or Orange friends able to assist him in the truly Masonic way
of getting members of the craft as Town-Councillors, or Aldermen, or
Members of Parliament—was, we now know, a true secret-society hypocrite
of the genuine Italian type. He prowled with effect round the Catholic
sheepfold. He joined “with fruit” the confraternities of the Church.
Well may we pray that God may guard from such satanic influences the
noble, generous-hearted, faithful young men of Ireland at home and in
all the lands of their vast colonization. The scoundrel that presents
the “knife” or the “prayer-book” ready to swear them in, is a murderer
in intention, and in effect whenever he dares to be, with a chance of
impunity. He is ready to drag them in the toils of the Carbonari, for
whether a secret society be Irish, English, or American; whether Fenian
or Invincible, no matter by what name it may be called, it is still black
Masonry—Carbonarism pure and simple. And the lost hypocrite and assassin
who tempts incautious youth, under the pretence of patriotism, to join
any such society, is ever, like Carey, as ready to betray as he is to
“swear in” his victim.
Another curious instruction given by the _Alta Vendita_ to the Carbonari
of the lower lodges, is the way to catch a priest and make the good,
simple man, unconsciously aid the designs of the revolutionary sectaries.
In the permanent instruction of the _Alta Vendita_, given to all the
lodges, you will recollect the passage I read for you relative to the
giving of bad names to faithful Prelates who may be too knowing or
too good to do the work of the Carbonari against conscience, God, and
the souls of men. “Ably find out the words and the ways to make them
unpopular” is the sum of that advice. Has it not been attempted amongst
ourselves? But the main advice of the permanent instruction is to seduce
the clergy. The ecclesiastic to be deceived is to be led on by patriotic
ardour. He is to be blinded by a constant, though, of course, false,
and fatal popularity. He is to be made believe that his course, so very
pleasant to flesh and blood, is not only the most patriotic but the best
for religion. “A free Church in a free State,” was the cry with which the
sectaries pulled down the altars, banished the religious, seized upon
Church property, robbed the Pope, and despoiled the Propaganda. There
were ecclesiastics so far deceived, at one time, as to be led away by
these cries in Italy, and ecclesiastics have been deceived, if not by
these, at least by cries as false and fatal elsewhere to our knowledge.
The seduction of foremost ecclesiastics, prelates, and bishops, was the
general policy of the sect at all times, and it remains so everywhere to
this day.
The rank and file of the Carbonari had to do with local priests and local
men of influence. These were, if possible, to be corrupted, unnerved,
and seduced. There was a method for that, “the corruption of the clergy
by ourselves” devised. Each Carbonaro was moreover ordered to try and
corrupt a fellow Christian, a man of family, by means that the devil
himself incarnate could not devise better for the purpose.
At the end of his letter, _Piccolo Tigre_ glances at means of corruption
which he hoped then—and his hopes were soon realized to the full—to have
in operation for the scattering of Masonic “light” throughout Italy. We
have another document which will enable us to judge of the nature of
this “light.” It is contained in a letter from _Vindex_ to _Nubius_, and
was meant to cause the ideas of the _Alta Vendita_ to pass through the
lodges. It is found in that convenient form of questioning which the
Sultan propounds to the Chiek-ul-Islam when he wants to make war. He
puts his reasons in a set of questions, and the Chiek replies in as many
answers. Then the war is right in the sight of Allah, and so all Islam go
to fight in a war so sanctified. The new Islam does the same. A skilfully
devised set of questions are posed for the consideration of one member
of the _Alta Vendita_ by another, and the answer which has been well
concocted in secret conclave, is of course either given or implied to be
given by the nature of the case. The horrible quality of the diabolical
measures proposed by Vindex to Nubius in this form for the desired
destruction of the Church, cannot be surpassed. If he discountenances
assassination, it is not from fear or loathing of that frightful crime,
but simply because it is not the best policy. He certainly did fall in
upon the only blow that could—if that were possible, which, thank God, it
is not—destroy the Church of God, and place, as he well says, Catholicity
in the tomb. This a translation of the document:—
“CASTELLAMARE, _9th August, 1838_.
“The murders of which our people render themselves culpable
now in France, now in Switzerland, and always in Italy, are
for us a shame and a remorse. It is the cradle of the world,
illustrated by the epilogue of Cain and Abel, and we are
too far in progress to content ourselves with such means.
To what purpose does it serve to kill a man? To strike fear
into the timid and to keep audacious hearts far from us? Our
predecessors in Carbonarism did not understand their power. It
is not in the blood of an isolated man, or even of a traitor,
that it is necessary to exercise it; it is upon the masses. Let
us not individualize crime. In order to grow great, even to the
proportions of patriotism and of hatred for the Church, it is
necessary to generalize it. A stroke of the dagger signifies
nothing, produces nothing. What does the world care for a few
unknown corpses cast upon the highway by the vengeance of
secret societies? What matters it to the world, if the blood of
a workman, of an artist, of a gentleman, or even of a prince,
has flown in virtue of a sentence of Mazzini, or certain of
his cut-throats playing seriously at the _Holy Vehme_. The
world has not time to lend an ear to the last cries of the
victim. It passes on and forgets; it is we, my Nubius, we
alone, that can suspend its march. Catholicism has no more fear
of a well-sharpened stiletto than monarchies have, but these
two bases of social order can fall by corruption. Let us then
never cease to corrupt. Tertullian was right in saying, that
the blood of martyrs was the seed of Christians. It is decided
in our councils, and we do not desire any more Christians. Let
us, then, not make martyrs, but let us popularise vice amongst
the multitudes. Let us cause them to draw it in by their five
senses; to drink it in; to be saturated with it; and that land
which Aretinus has sown is always disposed to receive lewd
teachings. Make vicious hearts, and you will have no more
Catholics. Keep the priest away from labour, from the altar,
from virtue. Seek adroitly to otherwise occupy his thoughts and
his hours. Make him lazy, a gourmand, and a patriot. He will
become ambitious, intriguing, and perverse. You will thus have
a thousand times better accomplished your task, than if you
had blunted the point of your stiletto upon the bones of some
poor wretches. I do not wish, nor do you any more, my friend
Nubius, is it not so? to devote my life to conspiracies, in
order to be dragged along in the old ruts.
“It is corruption _en masse_ that we have undertaken; the
corruption of the people by the clergy, and the corruption of
the clergy by ourselves; the corruption which ought, one day,
to enable us to put the Church in her tomb. I have recently
heard one of our friends, laughing in a philosophic manner at
our projects, say to us: ‘in order to destroy Catholicism it is
necessary to commence by suppressing woman.’ The words are true
in a sense; but since we cannot suppress woman, let us corrupt
her with the Church, _corruptio optimi pessima_. The object
we have in view is sufficiently good to tempt men such as we
are; let us not separate ourselves from it for some miserable
personal satisfaction of vengeance. The best poniard with which
to strike the Church is corruption. To the work then, even to
the very end.”
The horrible programme of impurity here proposed was at once adopted. It
was after all but an attempt more determined than ever, to spread the
immorality of which Voltaire and his school were the apostles. At the
time the _Alta Vendita_ propounded this infernal plan they were resisting
an inroad upon their authority on the part of Joseph Mazzini, just then
coming into notoriety, who, however, overcame them.
Mazzini developed and taught, in his grandiloquent style, as well as
practised the doctrine of assassination[14] which formed, we know, a
part of the system of all secret societies, and which the _Alta Vendita_
deprecated because they feared that it was about being employed, just
then, against the members of their own body. Mazzini speaks of having
arisen from his bed one morning fully satisfied as to the lawfulness
of removing whomsoever he might be pleased to consider an enemy, by
the dagger, and fully determined to put that horrible principle into
execution. He cherished it as the simplest means given to an oppressed
people to free themselves from tyrants. But however much he laboured to
make his terrible creed plausible, as being only permissible against
tyrants and traitors, it was readily foreseen how easily it could be
extended, until it became a capital danger for the sectaries themselves.
Human nature could never become so base and so blinded as not to revolt
against a principle so pernicious. It may last for a season amidst the
first pioneers of the _Alta Vendita_, amongst the Black Hand in Spain,
amongst the Nihilists in Russia, amongst the Invincibles in Ireland,
amongst the Trade-Unionists of the Bradlaugh stamp in England, or
amongst the Communists of Paris. It may serve as a means to hold in
terror the unfortunate prince or leader who may be seduced in youth or
manhood to join secret societies from motives of ambition; and when that
ambition was gratified, might refuse to go the lengths for Socialism
which the _Alta Vendita_ required. But otherwise assassination did not
by experience prove such a sovereign power in the hands of the Carbonari
as Mazzini expected. His more astute associates soon found out this;
and, not from any qualms of conscience, but from a strong sense of its
inexpediency for their ends, they determined to reject it. They found
out a more effective, though a far more infamous, way for attaining the
dark mastery of the world. It was by the assassination not of bodies but
of souls—by the deliberate systemization and persevering diffusion of
immorality.[15]
The _Alta Vendita_, then, sat down calmly to consider the best means to
accomplish this design. Satan and his fallen angels could devise no more
efficacious methods than they found out. They resolved to spread impurity
by every method used in the past by demons to tempt men to sin, to make
the practice of sin habitual, and to keep the unhappy victim in the state
of sin to the end. They had, being living men, means to accomplish this
purpose, which devils could not use without the aid of men. Christian
civilization established upon the ruins of the licentiousness of Paganism
had kept European society pure. Vice, when it did appear, had to hide
its head for shame. Public decency, supported by public opinion, kept it
down. So long as morality existed as a recognized virtue, the Revolution
had no chance of permanent success; and so the men of the _Alta Vendita_
resolved to bring back the world to a state of brutal licentiousness
not only as bad as that of Paganism, but to a state at which even the
morality of the Pagans would shudder. To do this they proceeded with
caution. Their first attempt was to cause vice to lose its conventional
horror, and to make it free from civil punishment. The unfortunate class
of human beings who make a sad trade in sin, were to be taken under the
protection of the law, and to be kept free from disease at the expense
of the State. Houses were to be licensed, inspected, protected, and
given over to their purposes. The dishonour attached to their infamous
condition was, so far as the law could effect it, to be taken away.
That wholesome sense of danger and fear of disease which averted the
criminally disposed from sin was to disappear. The agents of the _Alta
Vendita_ had instructions to increase the number and the seductiveness of
those unfortunate beings, while the State, when revolutionized, was to
close its eyes to their excesses, and to connive at their attempts upon
the youth of the country. They were to be planted close to great schools
and universities, and wherever else they could ruin the rising generation
in every country in which the sect should obtain power.
Then literature was systematically rendered as immoral as possible, and
diffused with a perseverance and labour worthy of a better cause. Railway
stations, newspaper stands, book shops, and restaurants, were made to
teem with infamous productions, while the same were scattered broadcast
to the people over every land.
The teaching of the Universities and of all the middle schools of the
State, was not only to be rendered Atheistic and hostile to religion, but
was actually framed to demoralize the unfortunate alumni at a season of
life always but too prone to vice.
Finally, besides the freest licence for blasphemy and immorality,
and the exhibition and diffusion of immoral pictures, paintings, and
statuary, a last attempt was to be made upon the virtue of young females
under the guise of educating them up to the standard of human progress.
Therefore, middle and high-class schools were, regardless of expense, to
be provided for female children, who should be, at any cost, taken far
away from the protecting care of nuns. They were to be taught in schools
directed by lay masters, and always exposed to such influences as would
sap, if not destroy, their purity, and, as a sure consequence, their
faith. These schools have since been the order of the day with Masonry
all over the world. “If we cannot suppress woman let us corrupt her with
the Church,” said Vindex, and they have faithfully acted upon this advice.
The terrible society which planned these infernal means for destroying
religion, social order, and the souls of men, continued its operations
for many years. Its “permanent instruction” became the Gospel of all the
secret societies of Europe. Its agents, like _Piccolo Tigre_, travelled
unceasingly in every country. Its orders were received, according to the
system of Masonry, by the heads and the rank and file of the lodges as
so many inevitable decrees. But fortunately for the world, it permitted
too much political action to the second lines of the great conspiracy.
In the latter, ambitious spirits arose, who, while embracing to the full
the doctrines of Voltaire and the principles of Weishaupt, began to
think that the _Alta Vendita_ stayed actual revolution too much. This
state of feeling became general when that high lodge refused admittance
to Mazzini, who wished to become one of the invisible forty—the number
beyond which the supreme governing body never permitted itself to pass.
The jealousy of _Nubius_—for jealousy is a quality of demons not
wanting from the highest intelligences in Atheistic organization to the
lowest—prevented his being admitted. But he was already far too powerful
with the rank and file of the Carbonari to be refused a voice in the
supreme management. He raised a cry against the old chiefs as being
impotent and needing change. _Nubius_ consequently passed mysteriously
away. M. Cretineau Joly[16] is clearly of opinion that it was by poison;
and as it was a custom with the unfortunate chief to betray for his own
protection, or for punishment, some lodges of Carbonari to the Pontifical
Government, it is more than probable that it was by his provision or
information that the same Government came into the possession of the
whole archives of the _Alta Vendita_, and that the Church and society
have the documents which I have quoted and others still more valuable to
guide them in discovering and defeating the attempts of organized Atheism.
The _Alta Vendita_ subsequently passed to Paris, and since it is believed
to Berlin. It was the immediate successor of the Inner Circle of
Weishaupt. It may change in the number of its adepts and in the places
of its meetings, but it always subsists. There is over it, a recognized
Chief like Nubius or Weishaupt. But in his lifetime this Chief is
usually unknown, at least to the world outside “Illuminated” Masonry.
He is unknown to the rank and file of the common lodges. But he wields
a power which, however, is not, as in the case of _Nubius_ and Mazzini,
always undisputed. Since that time, if not before it, there have been two
parties under its Directory, each having its own duties, well defined.
These are