Chapter XXVII · THE “SECRET CONCLAVE.”

The Editor finds that here the connected narrative of Etherial Softdown breaks off. Though there are many fragmentary notes, which he found in Yieger’s Cabinet, which bear a clear, yet somewhat disconnected relation, to the past and future of the scenes and actors already described; these he has thought proper to collate, and throw together into something as nearly approaching order as their desultory character will permit.

This man Yieger seems to have been an enthusiast of a very unusual stamp. He has, however, left so little concerning himself, that we can only say, he appears to have made it his business to follow up, in a quiet and unsuspected way, a certain series of investigations, the purport and tendency of which was to unveil a class of crimes, which, from being secret, were enabled to work and worm their way nearest to the core of the social state.

Thus, in addition to the monstrous and unimagined vices described by him in the preceding chapters, he seems to have discovered secret combinations, the possibilities of which have probably never entered before into human brains, but the results of which were as prodigious as the causes were unsuspected. These were composed of no mystic demagogues of humanitarianism, who sheltered mere partisan and personal designs, under the broad curtain of secret rituals symbolising philanthropic aims; no bald enthusiasts, who softly sunk their individualities in an Order, and sold their god-like birthrights of universal benevolence, of world-wide charity, for the golden shackles of a pretentious benevolence, the selfish code of which was, mutual protection first, and—nobody else afterwards!

These were wise, bold, hardened men—hardened in the rough contests by the highways of life—who had seen all, felt all, and known all, that life could give or take. They were prepared for any of its extremes, but had outlived its sympathies. They were incarnations of pure intellection; the accomplishment of the object was their conscience—they despised allegories, and they trampled upon symbols. Nothing was mysterious to them, but an undigested purpose. For them there was no law but that might be eluded—no sanctities, but as they might be used—no religion but necessity, which was, to them, achievement!

When such men organised, they merely came together,—ten or a dozen of them,—they required no oaths, no pledges—they knew each other! “We hold such and such opinions upon one point only; and that one point is, mutual interest, and under that, 1st, that we can govern this nation; 2d, that to govern it, we must subvert its institutions; and, 3d, subvert them we will! It is our interest; this is our only bond. Capital must have expansion. This hybrid republicanism saps the power of our great agent by its obstinate competition. We must demoralise the republic. We must make public virtue a by-word and a mockery, and private infamy to be honor. Beginning with the people, through our agents, we shall corrupt the State.

“We must pamper superstition, and pension energetic fanaticism—as on ‘Change we degrade commercial honor, and make ‘success’ the idol. We may fairly and reasonably calculate, that within a succeeding generation, even our theoretical schemes of republican subversion may be accomplished, and upon its ruins be erected that noble Oligarchy of caste and wealth for which we all conspire, as affording the only true protection to capital.

“Beside these general views, we may in a thousand other ways apply our combined capital to immediate advantage. We may buy up, through our agents, claims upon litigated estates, upon confiscated bonds, mortgages upon embarrassed property, land-claims, Government contracts, that have fallen into weak hands, and all those floating operations, constantly within hail, in which ready-money is eagerly grasped as the equivalent for enormous prospective gains.

“In addition, through our monopoly of the manufacturing interest, by a rigorous and impartial system of discipline, we shall soon be able to fill the masses of operators and producers with such distrust of each other, and fear of us, as to disintegrate their radical combinations, and bring them to our feet. Governing on ‘Change, we rule in politics; governing in politics, we are the despots in trade; ruling in trade, we subjugate production; production conquered, we domineer over labor. This is the common-sense view of our interests—of the interests of capital, which we represent. In the promotion of this object, we appoint and pension our secret agents, who are everywhere on the lookout for our interests. We arrange correspondence, in cipher, throughout the civilized world; we pension our editors and our reporters; we bribe our legislators, and, last of all, we establish and pay our secret police, local, and travelling, whose business it is, not alone to report to us the conduct of agents already employed, but to find and report to us others, who may be useful in such capacity.

“We punish treachery by death!”

Such is a partial schedule of the terms of one of these terrible confederacies, as furnished in a detached note by Yieger, which held its secret sessions in New York city. He seems to have obtained a sight of some of their records, but by what means, the most daring could only conjecture. He appears to have regarded this particular organisation as the most formidable of all, and to have traced many of its ramifications, in their covert results, with a singularly dogged tenacity.

Among the extraordinary papers contained in the Cabinet he has left, are to be found short notes, containing what are clearly reports and proceedings of this formidable conclave. Its mysterious signature, Regulus, seems to have been known throughout the world; and even he, though clearly a fierce and relentless foe, never writes it, but with the involuntary concession of respect, which large, clear letters, underscored, would seem to convey.

Having now presented such an outline of the character and designs of this secret conclave, as the means of information furnished him have enabled him to do, the Editor will proceed with the promised extracts from its proceedings, such as relate to those in regard to whom the reader may be supposed to have some curiosity.

First, we have here

“A NOTE CONCERNING ETHERIAL SOFTDOWN.

“This woman, whose patronymic was Softdown, first married a Quaker, named Orne; which name, after her separation, and until after her divorce, she continued to bear, with the alias of Marie. She began her public career, soon after her marriage, as a Quaker preacher; but the straitness of this sect not conforming at all to her latitudinarian principles, she recanted in disgust, and left the society. She now plunged at once into Physiology, and, after a miraculously short gestation, produced a few lectures, with which she went the rounds of two or three New England States, accompanied by her husband, whom she, sans ceremonie, dubbed M. D., without putting him to the trouble of reading, or ever having read, a book on any subject. He officiated as her doorkeeper, and received the ‘shillings;’ but, refusing to render any account of the proceeds, a furious feud grew up between them, and soon the war waxed hot and fierce.

“Finding this to be poor business on the whole, she deserted him, taking her child with her. The next occupation in which we find her versatile genius engaged, was that of teaching French; a more humble employment, surely, but one for which she was equally well fitted. This, however, soon disgusted her, as her unreasonable patrons would insist upon the vulgar necessity of her being able to speak French, as well as teach it. It was at best but a tame avocation, and one entirely unsuited to her ambitious temper.

“Having now fairly assayed her wings for flight, she soared aloft at once, in full career, through mid-air. She became first a preacher of Universalism; but meeting, about this time, with the celebrated Boanerges Phospher, she, in a few weeks, turned out full-plumed, as a lecturer on Elocution. To this she soon added a knowledge of Phrenology, which, in her active zeal, she took care to impart to the world, as fast as acquired, and in the same public manner.

“Then, as a natural consequence, came Mesmerism; then Neurology. Of all these sciences she became the prompt expounder, after a few days’ investigation.

“From this point she immediately ascended a step higher, and announced herself as a revelator in Clairvoyance; and, by an inevitable progression, she at once found admission, along with Andrew Jackson Davis and a host of other seers, into the Swedenborgian Arcana, and held herself on terms of frequent intercourse and positive intimacy with the angel Gabriel, and, indeed, the whole heavenly host.

“They revealed to her that the great and unpardonable sins of humanity were, first, eating pork; second, using tobacco, whether snuffing, smoking, or chewing; and, third, wine-drinking in all its forms. They accordingly commissioned her, formally, to go forth into the world as a missionary, to warn mankind against the fearful consequences of these vices, and to ‘save’ them therefrom.

“The exposition of Grahamism and Bran-bread was now added to the enlarged circle of her enlightened Professorships; and, by this aid, and that of her spiritual commission, she wrought wonders, in assailing the camps of the great foes of humanity—Pork, Tobacco, and Wine!

“Many were the brands plucked by her from the burning, or rather ‘saved’—preachers, lawyers, editors, artists, and watery-eyed young gentlemen, in particular. It was on this grand tour that she first assumed her most distinguished attribute, the Patroness of Art—particularly of the Artists.

“Returning to civilization once more, she again assumed her cast-off Professorship of Physiology, and began lecturing to classes of her own sex. Now, with the first gleam of light from Græfenberg, she pronounced herself as having been, for many years before, a practitioner of the system; and at once proceeded to combine Grahamism, Mesmerism, Water-cure, and Physiology.

“While in the vein of Physiology, she also lectured on the benefits of Amalgamation, Abolitionism, and Non-resistance. About this time, having met with one of the chief expounders of Fourierism, whom she also undertook to ‘save,’ she turned out in a few weeks a Phalanxsterian lecturer. That bubble had barely exploded, when she came forth a Communist. Shortly afterwards, having one or two editors separately undergoing the process of being ‘saved,’ she became authoress! She produced several physiological novels, a number of essays, poems, volumes of lectures, &c., &c.

“The police which obey the mandates of the formidable Regulus, have kept the changes of this feminine Proteus for now upward of forty years, steadily in view; and the Council of Disorganisation report, through their committee, that they have ample reason to be pleased with this Etherial Softdown, as the most indefatigable, active, unscrupulous, and energetic of the agents of Demoralisation in the employment of the Secret Conclave.

“They congratulate themselves in the belief that, with an hundred such employées devoted to their service, they could corrupt the private faith and public virtue of the whole Union so effectually, in a single generation, as to enable them to utterly destroy its social organisation and subvert its Constitution.

“This would, of course, secure the desired Oligarchy of caste and wealth, and reduce the nation to serfdom.

“She is to be encouraged, and placed upon the pension-list of the ‘Secret Conclave.’

“Since this report, the latest transformations of Etherial Softdown have been, first, into rabid Bloomerism; in the height of which madness, she possessed a sufficiency of the martyr-spirit to parade herself, on all public occasions, though nearly fifty years of age, in full costume.

“By a necessary transition, the next step was into an apostleship of the new school of ‘Woman’s Rights’ and Abolitionism; which openly rejoices in the repudiation of the Bible from among the sacred books of the world—accepting it merely as the text-book of popular cant, to be used in working upon the passions and superstitions of the mob.

“This last metamorphosis of Etherial Softdown seems to be the most promising of all those through which the police of the ‘Conclave’ have, thus far, been able to trace her.”[4]