I am well aware that there are multitudes in Freemasonry—even in the
most “advanced” Freemasonry of Italy and France—who have no real wish
to see the principles of these anarchists predominate. Those, for
instance, who in advocating the theories of Voltaire, and embracing for
their realisation the organization of Weishaupt, saw only a means to
get for themselves honours, power, and riches, which they could never
otherwise obtain but by Freemasonry, would be well pleased enough to
advance no further, once the good things they loved had been gained.
“_Nous voulons, Messieurs_,” said Thiers, “_la republique, mais la
republique conservatrice_.” He and his desired, of course, to have the
Republic which gave them all this world had to bestow, at the expense
of former possessors. They desired also the destruction of a religion
which crossed their corrupt inclinations, and which was suspected of
sympathy for the state of things which Masonry had supplanted. But they
had no notion, if they could help it, to descend again to the level of
the masses from which they had sprung. In Italy, for instance, this class
of Freemasons have had supreme power in their hands for over a quarter
of a century. They obtained it by professing the strongest sympathy for
the down-trodden millions whom they called slaves. They stated that
these slaves—the bulk of the Italian people in the country and in the
cities—were no better than tax-paying machines, the dupes and drudges of
their political tyrants. Victor Emmanuel, when he wanted, as he said, “to
liberate them from political tyrants,” declared that a cry came to him
from the “enslaved Italy,” composed of these down-trodden, unregenerated
millions. He and his Freemasons and Carbonari—the party of direction and
the party of action—therefore drove the native princes of the people from
their thrones, and seized upon the supreme sway throughout the Italian
peninsula. Were the millions of “slaves” served by the change? The whole
property of the Church was seized upon. Were the burdens of taxation
lightened? Very far from it. The change simply put hungry Freemasons,
and chiefly those of Piedmont, in possession of the Church lands and
revenues. It dispossessed many ancient Catholic proprietors, in order
to put Freemasons in their stead. But with what consequence to the vast
mass of the people, to the peasantry and the working population—some
twenty-four out of the twenty-six millions of the Italian people? The
consequence is this, that after a quarter of a century of vaunted
“regenerated Masonic rule,” during which “the liberators” were at perfect
liberty to confer any blessings they pleased upon the people as such, the
same people are at this moment more miserable than at any past period
of their history, at least since Catholicity became predominant as the
religion of the country. If their natural princes ever “whipped them
with whips,” for the good of the state, Freemasonry, under the House of
Savoy, slashes them with scorpions, for the good of the fraternity. To
keep power in the hands of the Atheists an army, ten times greater, and
ten times more costly than before, has to be supported by the “liberated”
people. A worthless but ruinously expensive navy has been created and
must be kept by the same unfortunate “regenerated” people. These poor
people, “regenerated and liberated,” must man the fleets and supply the
rank and file of the army and navy; they must give their sons, at the
most useful period of their lives, to the “service” of Masonic “United
Italy.” But the officials in both army and navy—and their number is
legion—supported by the taxes of the people, are Freemasons or the sons
of Freemasons. They vegetate in absolute uselessness, so far as the
development of the country is concerned, living in comparative luxury
upon its scanty resources. The civil service, like the army and navy,
is swelled with “government billets,” out of all proportion to the
wants of the people. It is filled with Freemasons. It is a paradise of
Freemasons, where Piedmontese patriots, who have intrigued with Cavour
or fought under Garibaldi, enjoy _otium cum dignitate_ at the expense of
the hard earnings of a people very poor at any time, but by the present
“regenerated” régime made more wretched and miserable than any Christian
peasantry—not even excepting the peasantry of Ireland—on the face of the
earth.
The consequence of the “liberation” wrought by the Freemasons in Italy
is this: They clamoured for representative institutions. All their
revolutions were made under the pretext that these were not granted—and
the mass of the Italian people—seven-eighths of them—are as yet
unenfranchised, after a quarter of a century of Masonic supremacy in the
land. The Masons represented the lot of the poor man as insupportable,
under the native princes. But under themselves the poor man’s condition,
instead of being ameliorated, has been made unspeakably worse. He is
positively, at present, ground down, in every little town of Italy, by
insupportable exactions. His former burdens are increased four-fold—in
many cases, ten-fold. To find money for all the extravagances of
Freemason rule—to make fortunes for the top-sawyers, and comfortable
places for the rank and file of the sect, a system of taxation, the
most elaborate, severe, and searching ever yet invented to crush a
nation, has been devised. The peasant’s rent is raised by Masonic
greed whenever a Mason becomes a proprietor, as is often the case with
regard to confiscated church lands. Land taxes cause the rents to rise
everywhere. The tenant must bear them. Then every article of the produce
of his little rented holding is taxed as he approaches the city gates
to sell it. At home his pig is taxed, his dog, if he can keep one, his
fowl, his house, his fire-place, his window light, his scanty earnings,
_titulo servizio_, all are specially, and for the poor, heavily taxed.
The consequence of this is, that few Italian peasants can, since Italy
became “United,” drink the wine they produce, or eat the wheat they grow.
Flesh meat, once in common use, is now as rare with them, as it used to
be with the peasantry in Ireland. Milk or butter they hardly ever taste.
Their food, often sadly insufficient, is reduced to _pizzi_, a kind of
cake made of Maize or Indian meal; and vegetables, or fruit, when in
season. Their drink is plain water. They are happy when they can mingle
with it a little _vinaccio_, a liquid made after the grapes are pressed,
and the wine drawn off, by pouring water on the refuse. Their homes
are cheerless and miserable, their children left to live in ignorance,
without schooling, employed in coarse labour, and clothed in rags.
The Grand Duke of Tuscany had by wise and generous regulations placed
hundreds, yea, even thousands of these peasants, happy as independent
farmers on their own land. The crushing load of taxation has caused these
to disappear, and their little holdings have been sold by auction to
pay taxes, and have passed, of course, into the hands of speculators,
generally Freemasons, who, when they become landlords, vie with the worst
of their class, in Ireland, in greed. In the States of the Church, where
the careful, most Christian, and compassionate spirit and legislation of
the Vicar of Christ prevailed, the peasantry ate their own bread, drank
their own wine, and were decently, nay even picturesquely clad, as all
travellers know, before the “liberation” of the Masonic Piedmontese.
Not a family was without a little hoard of savings for the age of the
old, and for the provision and placing in life of the young. Now, gaunt
misery, even starvation, is the characteristic of these populations,
after only some fifteen years of Masonic rule. The vast revenues of the
Church are gone, none know whither. The nation is none the better of
them, and the populace, in their dire poverty, can no longer go to the
convent-gate, where before the poor never asked for bread in vain. The
religious, deprived of their possessions, and severely repressed, have no
longer food to give. They are fast disappearing, and the people already
experience that the promises of Freemasonry, like the promises of its
real author, are but apples of ashes, given but to lure, to deceive, and
to destroy.
But to return. The Freemasonry of France and other Continental nations,
which has done so much to give effect to the principles of Voltaire and
Weishaupt, wishes decidedly not to go beyond the _role_ played by the
Freemasonry of Italy. But in France, as in Italy, an inexorable power
is behind them, pushing them on, and also fanatically determined to
push them off the scene when the time is ripe for doing so. This, the
Freemasons of Italy well know; this, the men now in power in France feel.
But if they move against the current coming upon them from the depths
of Freemasonry, woe to them. The knife of the assassin is ready. The
sentence of death is there, which they are too often told to remember,
and which has before now reached the very foremost men of the sect who
refused, or feared, for motives good or bad, to advance, or to advance
as quickly as the hidden chiefs of the Revolution desired and decreed.
It “removed” _Nubius_ in the days of Mazzini. It “removed” Gambetta
before our eyes. It aimed frequently at Napoleon III., and would, most
assuredly, have struck home, but its aim was only to terrify him that
so he as a Carbonaro may be made to do its work soon and effectively.
Masonry obtained its end, and Napoleon marched to the Italian war, and to
his doom.
It is this invisible power; this secret, sleepless, fanatical Directory,
which causes the solidarity, most evidently subsisting between
Freemasonry in its many degrees and aspects and the various parties of
anarchists which now arise everywhere in Europe. In the last century
kings, princes, nobles, took up Masonry. It swept them all away before
that century closed. In the beginning and progress of this century the
_Bourgeoisie_ took it up with still greater zest, and made it all their
own. They for a long time would not tolerate such a thing as a poor
Mason. Poverty was their enemy. What has come to pass? The _Bourgeoisie_
at this moment are the peculiar enemy of the class of workmen who have
invaded “Black” or “Illuminated” Masonry, and made it at last completely
theirs. The _Bourgeoisie_ are now called upon by the Socialists to be
true to the real levelling principles of the brotherhood—to practise
as well as preach “liberty, equality, and fraternity”; to divide their
possessions with the working men—to descend to that elysium of Masonry,
the level of the Commune—or die.
It is passing strange how Masonry, being what it is, has always managed
to get a princely or noble leader for every one of its distinct onward
movements against princes, property, and society. It had Egalité to
lead the movement against the throne of France in the last century. It
had the Duke of Brunswick, Frederick II., and Joseph II., to assist. In
this century we see it ornamented by Louis Philip, Napoleon III., Victor
Emmanuel and others as figure-heads; and then, Nubius and Palmerston both
won from the leaders of the Conservative nobility, were its real chiefs.
Now, when it appears in its worst possible form, it is championed by no
less a personage than a Russian Prince, of high lineage, a representative
of the wealthiest, most exclusive, and perhaps richest aristocracy in
the world. We find that in all cases of seduction like this, the promise
of a mighty leadership has been the bait by which the valuable dupe has
been caught by the sectaries. The advice of _Piccolo Tigre_ for the
seduction of princes has thus never been without its effect.
These new anarchical societies are not mere hap-hazard associations. They
are most ably organized. There is, for instance, in the International,
three degrees, or rather distinct societies, the one, however, led
by the other. First come the International Brethren. These know no
country but the Revolution; no other enemy but “reaction.” They refuse
all conciliation or compromise, and they regard every movement as
“reactionary” the moment it ceases to have for its object, directly or
indirectly, the triumph of the principles of the French Revolution.
They cannot go to any tribunal other than a jury of themselves, and
must assist each other, lawfully or otherwise, to the “very limits of
the possible.” No one is admitted who has not the firmness, fidelity,
intelligence, and energy considered sufficient by the chiefs, to carry
out as well as to accept the programme of the Revolution. They may leave
the body, but if they do, they are put under the strictest surveillance,
and any violation of the secret or indiscretion, damaging to the cause,
is punished inexorably by death. They are not permitted to join any other
society, secret or otherwise, or to take any public appointment without
permission from their local committee; and then they must make known all
secrets which could directly or indirectly serve the International cause.
The second class of Internationalists are the National Brethren. These
are local socialists, and are not permitted even to suspect the existence
of the International Brethren, who move among them and guide them in
virtue of higher degree. They figure in the meetings of the society, and
constitute the grand army of insurrection; they are, without knowing it,
completely directed by the others. Both classes are formed strictly upon
the lines laid down by Weishaupt.
The third class comprises all manner of workmen’s societies. With these
the two first mingle, and direct to the profit of the Revolution. The
death penalty for indiscretion or treason is common in every degree.
The Black Hand and the Nihilists, are directed by the same secret agency,
to violence and intrigue. Amongst them, but unknown to most of them, are
the men of the higher degrees, who, in dark concert, easily guide the
others as they please. They administer oaths, plan assassinations, urge
on to action, and terrorize a whole country, leaving the rank and file
who execute these things to their fate. It is unnecessary to dwell longer
upon these sectaries, well known by the outrages they perpetrate.
These terrible societies are unquestionably connected with, and governed
by, the dark directory, which now, as at all times since the days of
Weishaupt, rules the secret societies of the world. Mahommedanism
permitted the assassins gathered under the “old man of the mountain,” to
assist in spreading the faith of Islam by terrorising over its Christian
enemies. For a like purpose, whenever it judges it opportune, the dark
_Alta Vendita_ employs the assassins wholesale and retail of the secret
societies. It believes it can control when it pleases these ruthless
enemies of the human race. In this, as _Nubius_ found out, it is far
mistaken. But the encouragement of murderers as a “skirmishing” party of
the Cosmopolitan Revolution remains since the days of Weishaupt—a policy
kept steadily in view. To-day, that party is used against some power such
as that of the Popes, or the petty princes of Italy. Great powers like
England, in the belief that the mischief will stop in Italy, rejoice in
the results attained by assassination. To-morrow it suits the policy of
the _Alta Vendita_ to make a blow at aristocracy in England, at despotism
in Russia, at monarchy in Spain; and at once we find Invincibles formed
from the advanced amongst the Fenians; Nihilists and the Black Hand from
the ultras of the Carbonari; and Young Russia, ready to use dynamite and
the knife and the revolver, reckless of every consequence, for the ends
of the secret directory with which the diplomacy of the world has now to
count. The professional lectures on the use and manufacture of dynamite
given to Nihilists in Paris, the numbers of them gathered together in
that capital, the retreat afforded there to the known murderers of the
Emperor Alexander, excited little comment in England. If referred to
at all in the Press, it was not with that vigorous abhorrence which
such proceedings should create. Often a chuckle of satisfaction has
been indulged in by some at the fact. The utterances of the “advanced”
members of the Masonic Intellectual party in the French Senate excusing
Nihilists, were quoted with a kind of “faint damnation” equivalent to
praise. I have no doubt but in Russia a similar kind of tender treatment
is given to the Fenian dynamitards employed by O’Donovan Rossa. So
long as the leading nations in Europe do not see in these anarchists
and desperate miscreants the irreconcilable enemies of the human race,
Paris, completely as it is Masonic, will afford them a shelter; and when
French tribunals fine or imprison them, it will be as in Italy with a
tenderness still further exhibited in gaols. The salvation of Europe
depends upon a manly abhorrence of secret societies of every description,
and the pulling up root and branch from human society of the sect of the
Freemasons whose “illuminated” plottings have caused the mischief so far,
and which if not vigorously repressed by a decided union of Christian
nations will yet occasion far more. _Deus fecit nationes sanabiles._ The
nations can be saved. But if they are to be saved, it must be by a return
to Christianity and to public Christian usages; by eradicating Atheism
and its socialistic doctrines as crimes against the majesty of God and
the well-being of individual men and nations; by rigorously prohibiting
every form of secret society for any purpose whatever; by shutting the
mouth of the blasphemer; by controlling the voice of the scoffer and the
impure in the Press and in every other public expression; by insisting
on the vigorous, Christian education of children; and, if they can have
the wisdom of doing it, by opening their ears to the warning voice of
the Vicar of Jesus Christ. It is not an expression of Irish discontent
finding a vent in dynamite which England has most to fear from anarchy.
Its value to the Revolution is the knowledge it gives to those millions
whom English education-methods are depriving of faith in God, of the use
of a terrible engine against order, property, and the very existence of
the country as such. The dark directory of Socialism is powerful, wise,
and determined. It laughs at Ireland and her wrongs. It hates, and ever
will hate, the Irish people for their fidelity to the Catholic faith. But
it seizes upon those subjects which Irish discontent in America affords,
to make them teach the millions everywhere the power of dynamite, and
the knife, and the revolver, against the comparatively few who hold
property. This is the real secret of dynamite outrages in England, in
Russia, and all the world over; and I fear we are but upon the threshold
of a social convulsion which will try every nation where the wiles of the
secret societies have obtained, through the hate of senseless Christian
sectaries, the power for Atheism to dominate over the rising generation,
and deprive it of Christian faith, and the fear and the love of God.
I hope these my forebodings may not be realized, but I fear that even
before another decade passes, Socialism will attempt a convulsion of the
whole world equal to that of France in 1789; and that convulsion I fear
this country shall not escape. Our only chance lies in a return to God;
of which, alas, there are as yet but little signs amongst those who hold
power amongst us. I mean of course a return to the public Christianity of
the past.
To this pass Freemasonry has brought the world and itself. Its hidden
Directory no outsider can know. Events may afterwards reveal who they
were. Few can tell who is or is not within that dark conclave of lost but
able men. There is no staying the onward progress of the tide which bears
on the millions in their meshes, to ruin. The only thing we can hope to
do, is to save ourselves from being deceived by their wiles. This, thank
God, we may and will do. We can, at least, in compliance with the advice
of our Holy Father, open the eyes of our own people, of our young men
especially, to the nature and atrocity of the evil, that seeing, they
may avoid the snare laid for them by Atheism. To do this with greater
effect we shall now, for awhile, consider the danger as it appears
amongst ourselves. We shall also see what relation it has with its kind
in other countries; and so we shall take a brief survey of