THE WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. (continued 3)

The same influences of Atheism were potent, and for the same reasons, in all our Australian legislatures. There the influence of continental Freemasonry is stronger than at home, and conservative influences which neutralize Atheistic movements of too democratic a nature in England and Scotland, are weaker. Hence, in all our Australian Parliaments, Acts are passed with but a feeble resistance from the Church party, abolishing religious education of every kind, and making all the education of the country “secular, compulsory, and free.” That is, without religion, enforced upon every class, and at the general expense of the State. Hence, after paying the taxation in full, the Catholic and the conscientious Christian of the Church of England, have to sustain in all those colonies their own system of education, and this, while paying for the other system, and while bearing the additional burden of the competition of State schools, richly and completely endowed with every possible requisite and luxury out of the general taxes.

A final feature in the education-war of Atheism against the Church especially, and against Christianity of every kind, is the attempted higher education without religion of young girls. The expense which they have induced every legislature to undertake for this purpose is amazing; and how the nations tolerate that expense is equally amazing. It is but carrying out to the letter the advice of Vindex:—“If we cannot suppress woman, let us corrupt her together with the Church.” For this purpose those infamous hot-beds of foul vice, “lodges of adoption,” lodges for woman, and lodges “androgynes,”—lodges for libertine Masons and women—were established by the Illuminati of France in the last century. For the same purpose schools for the higher education of young girls are now devised. This we know by the open avowal of leading Masons. They were introduced into France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany for the purpose of withdrawing young girls of the middle and upper classes from the blessed, safe control of nuns in convents, and of leading them to positive Atheism by infidel masters and infidel associates. This design of the lodges is succeeding in its mission of terrible mischief; but, thank God, not amongst the daughters of respectable Christians of any kind, who value the chastity, the honour, or the future happiness here and hereafter of that sex of their children, who need most care and delicacy in educating.

In the extract from the permanent instruction of the Alta Vendita, you have already seen how astutely the Atheists compassed the corruption of youth in Universities. It is since notorious that in all high schools over which they have been able to obtain influence, the students have been deprived of religion, taught to mock and hate it, allured to vicious courses, and have been placed under professors without religion or morality. How can we be surprised if the Universities of the Continent have become the hot-beds of vice, revolution, and Atheism? When Masonry governs, as in France, Italy, and Germany, moreover, the only way for youth to obtain a livelihood on entering upon life is by being affiliated to Masonry; and the only way to secure advancement is to be devoted to the principles, the intrigues, and the interests of the sect.

The continuous efforts of Masonry, aided by an immoral and Atheistic literature, by a corrupt public opinion, by a zealous Propagandism of contempt for the Church, for her ministers and her ministrations, and by a sleepless, able Directory devoted to the furtherance of every evil end, are enough, in all reason, to ruin Christianity if that were not Divine. But, in addition to its intellectual efforts, Masonry has had from the beginning another powerful means of destroying the existing social and Christian order of the world in the interests of Atheism. We shall see what this is by a glance at the action of

XIX. The War Party under Palmerston.

Father Deschamps, on the authority of Eckert and Mislay, gives an interesting description of all that Freemasonry, under the direction of Lord Palmerston, attempted and effected after the failure of the revolutionary movements, conducted by the party of action, under Mazzini, in 1848. These were fomented to a large extent by British diplomacy and secret service money manipulated by Lord Palmerston. Under his guidance and assistance, Mazzini had organized all his revolutionary sects. Young Italy, Young Poland, Young Europe, and the rest sprang as much from the one as from the other. But after years of close union, Mazzini, who was probably hated by Palmerston, and dreaded as the murderer of Nubius, began to wane in influence. He and his party felt, of course, the inevitable effects of failure; and the leader subsided without, however, losing any of his utility for the sect. Napoleon III. appears to have supplanted him in the esteem of Palmerston, and would, if he dared, not follow the Carbonari. Mazzini accordingly hated Napoleon III. with a deadly hatred, which he lived to be able to gratify signally when Palmerston was no more. As he was the principal means of raising Palmerston to power in the Alta Vendita, so, after Palmerston had passed away, he introduced another great statesman to the high conductors, if not into the high conduct itself, of the whole conspiracy; and caused a fatal blow to be given to France and to the dynasty of Napoleon. Meanwhile, from 1849 to the end of the life of Palmerston, the designs formed by the high council of secret Atheism, were carried out with a perfection, a vigour, and a success never previously known in their history. Nothing was precipitated; yet everything marched rapidly to realization. The plan of Palmerston—or the plan of the deadly council which plotted under him—was to separate the two great conservative empires of Russia and Austria, while, at the same time, dealing a deadly blow at both. It was easy for Palmerston to make England see the utility of weakening Russia, which threatened her Indian possessions. France could be made join in the fray, by her ruler, and the powerful Masonic influence at his command: Therefore, the Russian campaign of 1852. But it was necessary for this war to keep Prussia and Austria quiet. Prussia was bribed by a promise to get, in time, the Empire of United Germany. Austria was frightened by the resolution of England and France to bring war to the Danube, and so form a projected Kingdom in Poland and Hungary. The joint power of England, France, and Turkey could easily, then, with the aid of the populations interested, form the new kingdom, and so effectually curb Russia and Austria. But it was of more importance for the designs of the sect upon the temporal power of the Pope, and upon Austria herself, to separate the Empires. Palmerston succeeded with Austria, who withdrew from her alliance with Russia. The forces, therefore, of England and France, were ordered from the Danube to the barren Crimea, as payment for her neutrality. This bribe proved the ruin of Austrian influence. As soon as Russia was separated from her, and weakened beyond the power of assisting her, if she would, France, countenanced by England, dealt a deadly blow at Austrian rule in Italy, united Italy, and placed the temporal power of the Pope in the last stage of decay. On the other hand, Prussia was permitted to deal a blow soon after at Austria. This finished the prestige of the latter as the leading power in Germany, and confined her to her original territory, with the loss of Venice, her remaining Italian province. After this war, Palmerston passed away, and Mazzini came, once more, into authority in the sect. He remembered his grudge against Napoleon, and at once used his influence with the high direction of Masonry to abandon France and assist Germany; and, on the promise of Bismarck—a promise fulfilled by the May laws—that Germany should persecute the Church as it was persecuted in Italy, Masonry went over to Germany, and Masons urged on Napoleon to that insane expedition which ended in placing Germany as the arbiter of Europe, and France and the dynasty of Napoleon in ruins. In the authorities I have quoted for you, there is abundant proof that Masonry, just as it had assisted the French Revolution and Napoleon I., now assisted the Germans. It placed treason on the side of the French, and sold in fact the unfortunate country and her unscrupulous ruler. Mazzini forced Italy not to assist Napoleon, and was gratified to find before his death, that the liar and traitor, who, in the hope of getting assistance he did not get from Masonry, had dealt his last blow at the Vicar of Christ, and placed Rome and the remnant of the States of the Church in the hands of the King of Italy, had lost the throne and gained the unenviable character of a coward and a fool.

This is necessarily but a brief glance at the programme, which Atheism has both planned and carried out since the rule of Palmerston commenced. Wherever it prevailed, the worst form of persecution of the Church at once began to rage. In Sardinia, as soon as it obtained hold of the King and Government, the designs of the French Revolution were at once carried out against religion. The State itself employed the horrible and impure contrivances of the Alta Vendita for the corruption and demoralisation of every class of the people. The flood gates of hell were opened. Education was at once made completely secular. Religious teachers were banished. The goods of the religious orders were confiscated. Their convents, their land, their very churches were sold, and they themselves were forced to starve on a miserable pension, while a succession was rigorously prohibited. All recognition of the spiritual power of Bishops was put an end to. The priesthood was systematically despised and degraded. The whole ministry of the Church was harassed in a hundred vexatious ways. Taxes of a crushing character were levied on the administration of the sacraments, on masses, and on the slender incomes of the parish clergy. Matrimony was made secular, divorce legalised, the privileges of the clerical state abrogated. Worse than all, the leva or conscription was rigorously enforced. Candidates for the priesthood at the most trying season of their career, were compelled to join the army for a number of years, and exposed to all the snares which the Alta Vendita had astutely prepared to destroy their purity, and with it, of course, their vocations; “make vicious hearts, and you will have no more Catholics.” Besides these measures made and provided by public authority, every favour of the State, its power of giving honours, patronage and place, was constantly denied to Catholics. To get any situation of value in the army, navy, civil service, police, revenue, on the railways, in the telegraph offices, to be a physician to the smallest municipality, to be employed almost anywhere, it was necessary to be a Freemason, or to have powerful Masonic influence. The press, the larger mercantile firms, important manufactories, depending as such institutions mostly do on State patronage and interest, were also in the hands of the Sectaries. To Catholics was left the lot of slaves. If permitted to exist at all, it was as the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. The lands which those amongst them held, who did not forsake religion, were taxed to an unbearable extent. The condition of the faithful Catholic peasants became wretched from the load of fiscal burdens placed upon them. The triumph of Atheism could not be more complete, so far as having all that the world could give on its side, and leaving to the Church scarcely more than covered her Divine Founder upon the Cross.

Bismarck, though assisted in his wars against France by the brave Catholic soldiers of the Rhine, and of the Fatherland generally, no sooner had his rival crushed, and his victory secured, than he hastened to pay to Freemasonry his promised persecution of the Church. The Freemasons in the German Parliament, and the Ministers of the sect, aided him to prepare measures against the Catholic religion as drastic as those in operation in Italy, even worse in many respects. The religious orders of men and women were rigorously suppressed or banished, as a first instalment. Then fell Catholic education to make way for an Infidel propagandism. Next came harassing decrees against the clergy by which Bishops were banished or imprisoned and parishes were deprived in hundreds of their priests. All the bad, immoral influences, invented and propagated by the sectaries, were permitted to run riot in the land. A schism was attempted in the Church. Ecclesiastical education was corrupted in the very bud, and all but the existence of Catholics was proscribed.

Wherever we find the dark sect triumphant we find the same results. In the Republics of South America, where Freemasonry holds the highest places, the condition of the Church is that of normal persecution and vexation of every kind. It has been so for many years in Spain and Portugal, in Switzerland, and to whatever extent Freemasons can accomplish it, in Belgium and in Austria. I need not say what it has been in France since the Freemason Parliament and Government have come into power. The dark Directory succeeding Weishaupt, the Alta Vendita, and Palmerston, sits in Paris and in Berlin almost openly, and prepares at leisure its measures, which are nothing short of, first, the speedy weakening of the Church, and then, I am certain, a bloody attempt at her extermination. If it goes on slower than it did during the French Revolution, it is in order to go on surer. Past experience too, and the determinations of the sect already arrived at, show but too clearly that a single final consummation is kept steadily in view. The impure assassins who conduct the conspiracy have had no scruple to imbrue their hands in the blood of Christians in the past, and they never will have a scruple to do so, whenever there is hope of success. In fact, from what I have seen and studied on the Continent, an attempt at this ultimate means of getting rid at least of the clergy and principal lay leaders amongst Catholics, might take place in France and even in Italy at any moment. In France, some new measure of persecution is introduced every day. The Concordat is broken openly. The honour of the country is despised. Subventions belonging by contract to the clergy are withdrawn. The insolence of the Atheistical Government, relying on the strength of the army and on the unaccountable apathy or cowardice of the French Catholic laity, progresses so fast, that no act of the Revolution of ’89 or of the Commune, can be thought improbable within the present decade; and Italy would be sure to follow any example set by France in this or in any other method of exterminating the Church.

There are sure signs in all the countries where the Atheistic Revolution has made decided progress, that this final catastrophe is planned already, and that its instruments are in course of preparation. These instruments are something the same as were devised by the illuminated lodges, when the power of the French Revolution began to pass from the National Assembly to the clubs. The clubs were the open and ultimate expression of the destructive, anti-Christianity of Atheism; and when the lodges reached so far, there was no further need for secrecy. That which in the jargon of the sect is called “the object of the labour of ages,” was attained. Man was without God or Faith, King or Law. He had reached the level aimed at by the Commune, which is itself the ultimate end of all Masonry, and all that secret Atheistic plotting which, since the rise of Atheism, has filled the world.

In our day, if Masonry does not found Jacobite or other clubs, it originates and cherishes movements fully as Satanic and as dangerous. Communism, just like Carbonarism, is but a form of the illuminated Masonry of Weishaupt. “Our end,” said the Alta Vendita, “is that of Voltaire and the French Revolution.” Names and methods are varied, but that end is ever the same. The clubs at the period of the French Revolution were, after all, local. Masonry now endeavours to generalise their principles and their powers of destructive activity on a vastly more extended scale. We therefore no longer hear of Jacobins or Girondins, but we hear of movements destined to be for all countries what the Jacobins and the Girondins were for Paris and for France. As surely, and for the same purpose, as the clubs proceeded from the lodges in 1789, so, in this latter half of the nineteenth century, the lodges send out upon the whole civilised world, for the very same intent, the terrible Socialist organizations, all founded upon the lines of Communism, and called, according to the exigencies of time, place, and condition, the association of the brethren of

XX. The International, The Nihilists, The Black Hand, etc.

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

XXI. Freemasonry with Ourselves.

We hear from every side a great deal regarding the difference said to exist between Freemasonry as it has remained in the United Kingdom, and as it has developed itself on the Continent of Europe since its introduction there chiefly, we must remember, by British Jacobites, in the last century. It is argued, that the Illuminism of Weishaupt, or that of Saint Martin, did not cross the Channel to any great extent; and that, on the whole, the lodges of England, Ireland, and Scotland remained loyal to Monarchy and to religion. There is much truth in all this. The Conservative character of the mass of English Freemasons, and the fact, that amongst them were found the real governors and possessors of the country, made it impossible that such men could conspire against their own selves. But, as I have already shown, the fact that British lodges have always had intercourse with the lodges of the Continent,⁠[22] makes it equally impossible that some, at least, of the theories of the latter should not have got into the lodges at this side of the water. I believe it is owing mainly to this influence over British Freemasons, that so many revolutionary movements have found favour with our legislators, who are, when they are not Catholics, generally of the craft. It was through it, that the fatal foreign policy of Lord Palmerston obtained such support, even against the conviction and instincts of the best and most farseeing statesmen of the country, as, for instance, the late Lord Derby. It was through it, certainly, that the cry for secular education was welcomed amongst us; that divorce and “liberal” marriage laws came into force, and that attacks were permitted upon the sanctity of the Sabbath and other Christian institutions.

Speaking on this latter subject, I must say, that one change in the habits of the people of England, and Scotland, too, struck me very forcibly on my return to the United Kingdom after a long absence. When, some twenty-three years ago, I last visited these Islands, it was a pleasure—and when one thought of the desecration of the Sabbath on the Continent, it was a pride—to witness the state of the streets of our great cities on Sundays. The shops were as shut up as at midnight. Every thoroughfare manifested a religious quiet, which reverentially and most emphatically proclaimed the reign of God in the country. On my return, I found that a new departure from good, old, holy customs had commenced, which to me looked anything but an improvement. I found in London and elsewhere, a multitude of shops with shutters removed, and goods displayed in the most tempting profusion, marked for sale, and distracting the passers-by even more than they could do on a week-day. A contrivance to keep within the law was introduced in many cases. It was a kind of iron-rail door-way, which left the full inside of the shop or store visible; so that, to all intents and purposes, the interior was within the turn of a key of being as much in the way of business as shops of the same kind in Paris. What prevented business being done, and clerks and assistants being forced to labour as vigorously on the Sabbath as on any other day? The law alone. This, a breath might destroy; and public opinion, already accustomed to the sight of shop windows open on Sundays, would easily become reconciled to the turn of the key in the iron door. At first this would be only for a few hours, of course; but afterwards, just as in Paris, for ever. No doubt, a large percentage of good, religious shopkeepers avoid this scandal; and I hope the public of our cities will make out these, and patronize them in preference to others, who put the thin end of the wedge of destruction into our observance of the Christian sanctity of the Sabbath—an observance which, in the midst of a world falling fast from God, sustains that great, divine institution; and, besides giving time to worship God, protects the liberties of the poor, and prevents them from again becoming slaves. The doing away by degrees of the “Lord’s Day” is a favourite aim of Atheism; and it is by resisting this aim—by resisting all its aims on morality and religion—that we can hope to sustain the Christianity and the religious character of this country and its people.⁠[23]

But granting that British lodges remain unaffected by Atheism and Anti-Christianity which, as we have seen, influence the whole mass of Continental Freemasonry, would they on that account be innocent? Could a conscientious man of any Christian denomination join them? The question is, of course, decided for Catholics. The Church forbids her children to be members of British or any Freemasonry under penalty of excommunication. The reasons which have led the Church to make a law so stringent and so serious must have been very grave. We have seen some at least of these reasons; and it is certainly with a full knowledge of facts that she has decreed the same penalties against such of her children as join the English lodges as she has against those who join the lodges of the Continent. Then, though parsons have become “chaplains” to lodges, Anglicans generally have shown no sympathy with the Freemasonry of England. I am not aware that Protestant denominations assume, or that their members grant them, the power of making laws which could bind in conscience. If they did possess such power, many of them, I have no doubt, would forbid Freemasonry, as dangerous and evil in itself. But it needs not a law from man to guide one in determining what is clearly prohibited by reason and revelation. Now that which is called harmless Freemasonry with us, is, besides the evident danger to which it is exposed, of being made what it has become in the rest of the world, both sacrilegious and dangerous. If it be only a society for brotherly intercourse and mutual help, where can be the necessity of taking for such purposes, a number of oaths of the most frightful character? I shall with your permission quote some of these oaths—the most ordinary ones taken by every English Freemason who advances to the first three degrees of the Craft. Oaths far more blasphemous and terrible are taken in the higher degrees both in England and on the Continent. I shall also give you the passwords, grips, and signs for these three main degrees. You can then judge of the nature of the travesty that is made of the name of God for purposes utterly puerile, if not meant to cover such real and deadly secrecy as that of Continental Masonry.

The first of these oaths is administered to the candidate who wishes to become an apprentice. He is divested of all money and metal. His right arm, left breast and left knee are bare. His right heel is slipshod. He is blindfolded, and a rope called a “cable-tow,” adapted for hanging, is placed round his neck. A sword is pointed to his breast, and in this manner he is placed kneeling before the Master of the Lodge, in whose presence he takes the following oath, his hand placed on a Bible:

“I, N. N., in the presence of the great Architect of the Universe, and of this warranted, worthy and worshipful Lodge of free and accepted Masons, regularly assembled and properly dedicated, of my own free will and accord, do hereby and hereon, most solemnly and sincerely swear, that I will always hail, conceal, and never reveal, any part or parts, point or points, of the secrets and mysteries of, or belonging to, free and accepted Masons in masonry, which have been, shall now, or hereafter may be, communicated to me, unless it be to a true and lawful brother or brothers, and not even to him or them, till after due trial, strict examination, or sure information from a well-known brother, that he or they are worthy of that confidence, or in the body of a just, perfect, and regular lodge of accepted Freemasons. I further solemnly promise, that I will not write those secrets, print, carve, engrave, or otherwise them delineate, or cause or suffer them to be done so by others, if in my power to prevent it, on anything movable or immovable under the canopy of heaven, whereby or whereon any letter, character or figure, or the least trace of a letter, character or figure may become legible or intelligible to myself, or to anyone in the world, so that our secrets, arts, and hidden mysteries, may improperly become known through my unworthiness. These several points I solemnly swear to observe, without evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation of any kind, under no less a penalty, on the violation of any of them, than to have my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by the root, and my body buried in the sand of the sea at low water mark, or a cable’s length from the shore, where the tide regularly ebbs and flows twice in the twenty-four hours, or the more efficient punishment of being branded as a wilfully perjured individual, void of all moral worth, and unfit to be received in this warranted lodge, or in any other warranted lodge, or society of Masons, who prize honour and virtue above all the external advantages of rank and fortune: So help me, God, and keep me steadfast in this my great and solemn obligation of an Entered Apprentice Freemason.

“W. M.—What you have repeated may be considered a sacred promise as a pledge of your fidelity, and to render it a solemn obligation, I will thank you to seal it with your lips on the volume of the sacred law.” (Kisses the Bible.)

When the above oath is duly taken, the “sign” is given. This, for an Apprentice, consists of a gesture made by drawing the hand smartly across the throat and dropping it to the side. This gesture has reference to the penalty attached to breaking the oath. The grip is also a penal sign. It consists of a distinct pressure of the top of the right hand thumb to the first joint from the wrist of the right hand forefinger, grasping the finger with the hand. The pass-word is Boaz, and is given letter by letter.

There are a number of quaint ceremonial charges and lectures which may be seen by consulting any of the Manuals of Freemasonry, and which are perfectly given in a treatise by one Carlile, an Atheist, who undertook for the benefit of Infidelity to divulge the whole of the mere ceremonial secrecy of English Freemasons, in order to advance the real secret of it all, namely, Pantheism or Atheism, and hatred for every form of Christianity. The English Freemasons made too much of the ceremonies and too little of Atheism, and hence the design of real Infidelity to get the “real secret” into English lodges by expelling the pretended one.

The oath of the second degree, that of Fellow-Craft, is as follows:—

“I, N. N., in the presence of the Grand Geometrician of the Universe, and in this worshipful and warranted Lodge of Fellow-Craft Masons, duly constituted, regularly assembled, and properly dedicated, of my own free will and accord, do hereby and hereon most solemnly promise and swear that I will always hail, conceal, and never reveal any or either of the secrets or mysteries of, or belonging to, the second degree of Freemasonry, known by the name of the Fellow-Craft; to him who is but an Entered Apprentice, no more than I would either of them to the uninitiated or the popular world who are not Masons. I further solemnly pledge myself to act as a true and faithful craftsman, obey signs, and maintain the principles inculcated in the first degree. All these points I most solemnly swear to obey, without evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation of any kind, under no less a penalty, on the violation of any of them, in addition to my former obligation, than to have my left breast cut open, my heart torn therefrom, and given to the ravenous birds of the air, or the devouring beasts of the field, as a prey: So help me Almighty God, and keep me steadfast in this my great and solemn obligation of a Fellow-Craft Mason.”

After taking this oath with all formality, the Fellow-Craft is entrusted with the sign, grip and pass-word by the Master, who thus addresses him:—

“You, having taken the solemn obligation of a Fellow-Craft Freemason, I shall proceed to entrust you with the secrets of the degree. You will advance towards me as at your initiation. Now take another pace with your left foot, bringing the right heel into its hollow, as before. That is the second regular step in Freemasonry, and it is in this position that the secrets of the degree are communicated. They consist, as in the former instance, of a sign, token, and word; with this difference that the sign is of a three-fold nature. The first part of a three-fold sign is called the sign of fidelity, emblematically to shield the repository of your secrets from the attacks of the cowan. (The sign is made by pressing the right hand on the left breast, extending the thumb perpendicularly to form a square.) The second part is called the hailing sign, and is given by throwing the left hand up in this manner (horizontal from the shoulder to the elbow, and perpendicular from the elbow to the ends of the fingers, with the thumb and forefinger forming a square.) The third part is called the penal sign, and is given by drawing the hand across the breasts and dropping it to the side. This is in allusion to the penalty of your obligation, implying that as a man of honour, and a Fellow-Craft, you would rather have your heart torn from your breast, than to improperly divulge the secrets of this degree. The grip, or token, is given by a distinct pressure of the thumb on the second joint of the hand or that of the middle finger. This demands a word; a word to be given and received with the same strict caution as the one in the former degree, either by letters or syllables. The word is Jachin. As in the course of the evening you will be called on for this word, the Senior Deacon will now dictate the answers you will have to give.”

The next oath is that of the highest substantial degree in old Freemasonry, namely, that of Master. Attention is specially to be paid to the words “or at my own option.”

“I, N. N., in the presence of the Most High, and of this worthy and worshipful lodge, duly constituted, regularly assembled, and properly dedicated, of my own free will and accord, do hereby and hereon, most solemnly promise and swear, that I will always hail, conceal, and never reveal, any or either of the secrets or mysteries of, or belonging to, the degree of a Master Mason, to anyone in the world, unless it be to him or them to whom the same may justly and lawfully belong; and not even to him or them, until after due trials, strict examination, or full conviction, that he or they are worthy of that confidence, or in the bosom of a Master Mason’s Lodge. I further most solemnly engage, that I will keep the secrets of the Third Degree from him who is but a Fellow-Craft Mason, with the same strict caution as I will those of the Second Degree from him who is but an Entered Apprentice Freemason: the same or either of them, from anyone in the known world, unless to true and lawful Brother Masons. I further solemnly engage myself, to advance to the pedestal of the square and compasses, to answer and obey all lawful signs and summonses sent to me from a Master Mason’s Lodge, if within the length of my cable-tow, and to plead no excuse except sickness, or the pressing emergency of my own private or public avocations. I furthermore solemnly pledge myself, to maintain and support the five points of fellowship, in act as well as in word; that my hand given to a Mason shall be the sure pledge of brotherhood; that my foot shall traverse through danger and difficulties, to unite with his in forming a column of mutual defence and safety; that the posture of my daily supplications shall remind me of his wants, and dispose my heart to succour his distresses and relieve his necessities, as far as may fairly be done without detriment to myself or connexions; that my breast shall be the sacred repository of his secrets, when delivered to me as such; murder, treason, felony, and all other offences contrary to the law of God, or the ordinances of the realm, being at all times most especially excepted or at my own option: and finally, that I will support a Master Mason’s character in his absence as well as I would if he were present. I will not revile him myself, nor knowingly suffer others to do so; but will boldly repel the slanderer of his good name, and strictly respect the chastity of those that are most dear to him, in the persons of his wife, sister, or his child: and that I will not knowingly have unlawful carnal connexion with either of them. I furthermore solemnly vow and declare, that I will not defraud a Brother Master Mason, or see him defrauded of the most trifling amount, without giving him due and timely notice thereof; that I will also prefer a Brother Master Mason in all my dealings, and recommend him to others as much as lies in my power, so long as he shall continue to act honourably, honestly and faithfully towards me and others. All these several points I promise to observe, without equivocation or mental reservation of any kind, under no less a penalty, on the violation of any of them, than to have my body severed in two, my bowels torn thereout, and burned to ashes in the centre, and those ashes scattered before the four cardinal points of heaven, so that no trace or remembrance of me shall be left among men, particularly among Master Masons: So help me God, and keep me steadfast in this grand and solemn obligation, being that of a Master Mason.”

“A long ceremony, in which the newly-made Master is made to sham a dead man and to be raised to life by the Master, grasping, or rather clawing his hand or wrist, by putting his right foot to his foot, his knee to his knee, bringing up the right breast to his breast, and with his hand over the back. This is practised in Masonry as the five points of Fellowship.”

Then the Master gives the signs, grip, and pass-word, saying:

“Of the signs, the first and second are casual, the third is penal. The first casual sign is called the sign of horror, and is given from the Fellow-Craft’s hailing sign, by dropping the left hand and elevating the right, as if to screen the eyes from a painful sight, at the same time throwing the head over the right shoulder, as a remove or turning away from that sight. It alludes to the finding of our murdered Master Hiram by the twelve Fellow-Crafts. The second casual sign is called the sign of sympathy or sorrow, and is given by bending the head a little forward, and by striking the right hand gently on the forehead. The third is called the penal sign, because it alludes to the penalty of your obligation, and is given by drawing the hand across the centre of the body, dropping it to the side, and then raising it again to place the point of the thumb on the navel. It implies that, as a man of honour, and a Master Mason, you would rather be severed in two than improperly divulge the secrets of this Degree. The grip or token is the first of the five points of fellowship. The five points of fellowship are: first, a grip with the right hand of each other’s wrist, with the points of the fingers: second, right foot parallel with right foot on the inside: third, right knee to right knee: fourth, right breast to right breast: fifth, hand over shoulder, supporting the back. It is in this position, and this only, except in open lodge, and then but in a whisper, that the word is given. It is Mahabone or Macbenach. The former is the ancient, the latter the modern word.”

I have here given an idea of the principal ceremonies used in making English Freemasons. I could not in the space I have allotted to myself, enter, as I would wish to do, upon other features of its ridiculous rites and observances, many of which in still higher degrees, get a gradually opening, Atheistic and most anti-Christian interpretation. But it will suffice for my purpose to bring one fact under your observation. In the ceremonies accompanying initiations, many charges are made to the candidates and lectures and catechisings are given. In these, in the highest degrees, the real secret is gradually divulged in a manner apparently the most simple. For instance in the degree of the Knights Adepts of the Eagle or the Sun, the Master in his charge describing the Bible, Compass, and Square, says:—

“By the Bible, you are to understand that it is the only law you ought to follow. It is that which Adam received at his creation, and which the Almighty engraved in his heart. This law is called natural law, and shows positively that there is but one God, and to adore only him without any sub-division or interpolation. The Compass gives you the faculty of judging for yourself, that whatever God has created is well, and he is the sovereign author of everything. Existing in himself, nothing is either good or evil, because we understand by this expression, an action done which is excellent in itself, is relative, and submits to the human understanding, judging to know the value and price of such action, and that God, with whom everything is possible, communicates nothing of his will but such as his great goodness pleases; and everything in the universe is governed as he has decreed it with justice, being able to compare it with the attributes of the Divinity. I equally say, that in himself there is no evil, because he has made everything with exactness, and that everything exists according to his will; consequently, as it ought to be. The distance between good and evil, with the Divinity, cannot be more justly and clearly compared than by a circle formed with a compass: from the points being reunited there is formed an entire circumference; and when any point in particular equally approaches or equally separates from its point, it is only a faint resemblance of the distance between good and evil, which we compare by the points of a compass forming a circle, which circle, when completed, is God!”

From this it will be clear, to what the so-called veneration for the Bible and for religion comes to, at last, in all Freemasonry. From apparent agreement with Christianity it ends in Atheism. In the essentially Jewish symbolism of Masonry, the Trinity is ignored from the commencement, and God reduced to a Grand Architect. The mention of Christ is carefully avoided. By degrees the Bible is not revelation at all—only the laws written on the heart of every man by the one God—the one God, yet, however, somewhat respected. But in a little while, we find the “one God” reduced to very small dimensions indeed. You may judge for yourself by the Compass that God exists in himself, “therefore”—though it is hard here to see the therefore—“nothing is either good or evil.” Here is a blow at the moral law. Finally, “God” spoken of with such respect in all the going before degrees is reduced to a nonentity “which circle when completed is God.” This is a perfect introduction on Weishaupt’s lines to Weishaupt’s Pantheism.

But the theories of Masonry however developed, do less practical mischief than the conduct it fosters. The English, happily for themselves, are, in many useful respects, an eminently inconsistent people. The gentry amongst them can join Freemasonry and yet keep, in the most illogical manner possible, their very diluted form of Christianity. It has been otherwise with the more reasoning Continental Masons. They either abandon the Craft or abandon their Christianity. But the morality inculcated by Freemasonry has done immense damage in English-speaking countries nevertheless. The very oath binding a Master Mason to respect the chastity of certain near relations of another Master Mason, insinuates a wide field for licence; and Masons, even in England, have never been the most moral of men. It leads them, we too well know, to the neglect of home duties, and it leads them to an unjust persecution of outsiders, for the benefit of Craftsmen—a matter more than once complained of as injurious in trade, politics, and social life. I need not call to your mind what mischief—what foul murder—it has led to in America. I prefer to let Carlile, the Infidel apologist of dark Masonry, speak on this point. He says:—

“My exposure of Freemasonry in 1825 led to its exposure in the United States of America; and a Mason there of the name of William Morgan, having announced his intention to assist in the work of exposure, was kidnapped under pretended forms and warrants of law, by his brother Masons, removed from the State of New York to the borders of Canada, near the falls of Niagara, and there most barbarously murdered. This happened in 1826. The States have been for many years much excited upon the subject; a regular warfare has arisen between Masons and anti-Masons;—societies of anti-Masons have been formed; newspapers and magazines started; and many pamphlets and volumes, with much correspondence, published; so that, before the Slavery Question was pressed among them, all parties had merged into Masons and anti-Masons. Several persons were punished for the abduction of Morgan; but the murderers were sheltered by Masonic Lodges, and rescued from justice. This was quite enough to show that Masonry, as consisting of a secret association, or an association with secret oaths and ceremonies, is a political and social evil.”

“While writing this, I have been informed that individual members of Orange Lodges have smiled at the dissolution of their Lodges, with the observation, that precisely the same association can be carried on under the name of Masonry. This is an evil that secret associations admit. No form of anything of the kind, when secret, can protect itself from abuses; and this is a strong reason why Masonic associations should get rid of their unnecessary oaths, revise their constitutions, and throw themselves open to public inspection and report. There is enough that may be made respectable in Masonry, in the present state of mind and customs, to admit of scrutinising publicity.”

The question of the death of Morgan, and other unhappy incidents in the history of Freemasonry in the United States, are very fully treated by Father Müller, C.SS.R. Yet, strange to say, notwithstanding anti-Masonic societies being formed extensively in the Great Republic, and the horror created by the murder of Morgan, there is no part of the world where Masonry flourishes more than in America. I believe it will yet become the greatest enemy of the free institutions of that country. I am willing to admit, however, that Freemasonry has, thank God, made little progress amongst Catholics in Ireland, or Catholics of Irish birth or blood anywhere. This is true, and the same may be said of millions of Protestants who have not joined Masonry. But the evil is amongst us for all that, and it is necessary that we should know what it is and how it manifests itself.

We know too, that besides the movements which Masonry has been called upon to serve by means of Masonic organs, and resolutions inspired by Atheism, and advocated by its hidden friends scattered through British lodges, there have been at all times, at least in London, some lodges affiliated to Continental lodges, and doing the work of Weishaupt. Of this class were several lodges of foreigners and Jews, which existed in London contemporaneously with Lord Palmerston, and which aided him in the government and direction of the secret societies of the world, and in the Infidel Revolution which was carried on during his reign with such ability and success. In the works of Deschamps, a detailed account will be found of several of these high temples of iniquity and deadly, anti-Christian intrigue. But, besides, Masonry of any description—and every description, for reasons already stated, even the most apparently harmless, is positively bad—bad, because of its oaths, because of its associations, and because of its un-Christian character, there were other societies formed on the lines of Illuminated Masonry under various names in Great Britain, and especially in Ireland, of which I deem it my duty while treating of the subject to speak as plainly as I possibly can. The most notable amongst these is—

XXII. Fenianism.

From the establishment of Illuminated Masonry, its Supreme Council never lost sight of a discontented population in any part of the earth. Aspiring to universal rule, it carefully took cognizance of every national or social movement among the masses, which gave promise of advancing its aims. It was thus it succeeded with the operative and peasant population of France, so as to accomplish the first and every subsequent revolution in that country. The letters of the Alta Vendita and of Piccolo Tigre especially, have carefully had in view the corruption of the masses of working men, so as to de-Christianize them adroitly, and fit and fashion them into revolutionists. Now amongst all the peoples of the earth, those who most impeded Atheistic designs, were the Catholics of Ireland. Forced to leave their country in millions, they brought to Scotland, to England, to the United States, to Canada, to the West Indies, to our growing Colonies—all empires in germ—of Australia, and as soldiers of England, to India, Africa and China, the strongest existing faith in that very religion, which Atheistic Freemasonry so much desires to destroy. It would be impossible to imagine, that the dark Directories of the Illuminati did not take careful account of this population. And they did. In the years preceding 1798, they had emissaries, like those sent subsequently amongst the Catholic Carbonari of Naples, active amongst the ranks of the United Irishmen. France, then completely under the control of the Illuminati, sent aid which she sorely wanted at home, at the instigation of these very emissaries, to found an Irish Republic, of course on the Atheistic lines, upon which all the Republics then founded by her arms, were established. That expedition ended in failure; but organisations on the lines of Freemasonry continued for many years afterwards to distract Ireland. As in Italy, the Illuminati had taught the peasantry of Ireland how to conspire in secret, oath bound, and, of course, often murderous, but always hopeless, league against their oppressors. These societies never accomplished one atom of good for Ireland. They did much mischief. But what cared the hidden enemies of religion for the real happiness of the Irish? Their gain consisted in placing antagonism between the faithful pastors of the people and the members of those secret societies of Ribbonmen, Molly Maguires, and other such associations, organized by designing and, generally, traitorous scoundrels. In 1848, there was something like a tendency in Ireland to imitate the secret revolutionary movements established on the Continent by Mazzini. We had a Young Ireland Organization. That was not initiated as a secret society. Neither was the Society of United Irishmen at first. But the open United Irishmen led to the secret society; and so very easily might the Young Ireland movement of 1848, if it had not been prematurely brought to a conclusion. As it was, it led, without its leaders desiring it—indeed against the will of many of them—to the deepest, most cunningly devised, wide-spread, and mischievous, secret organization into which heedless young Irishmen have been ever yet entrapped. This was the Fenian Secret Society.

We can speak of the action of the originators of this movement as connected with the worst form of Atheistic, Continental, secret-society organization; for they boasted of having gone over to France “to study” the plans elaborated by the most abandoned revolutionists in that country. For my own part, I believe that these hot-headed young men, as they were at the time, never took the initiative themselves, but were entrapped into this course of action by agents of the designing Directory of the Atheistic movement, at that moment presided over by Lord Palmerston himself. That the association of the Fenians should be created and afterwards sacrificed to England, would be but in keeping with the traditions of the Alta Vendita, in whose place Lord Palmerston and his council stood. We read in the life of the celebrated Nubius, the monarch who preceded Palmerston, that he often betrayed into the hands of the Pontifical Government some lodges of the Carbonari under his own rule, for the purpose of screening himself and of punishing these very lodges. If he found a lodge indiscreet, or possessing amongst its members too much religion to be tractable enough to follow the Infidel movement, he betrayed it. He told the Government how to find it out; where it had its arms concealed; who were its members; and what were their misdeeds. They were accordingly taken red-handed, tried, and executed. Nubius got rid of a difficult body, for whom he felt nothing but contempt; and his position at Rome was rendered secure to gnaw, as he himself expressed it, at the foundations of that Pontifical power, which thought that any connection, such a respectable nobleman as he was, might have with assassins, could be only in reality for the good of religion and the government, to which by station, education, and even class-interest he was allied. Palmerston, too, if he wanted a blind to lead his colleagues astray, could, in the knowledge to be obtained of Fenian plots in Ireland and America, have a ready excuse for his well-known, constant intercourse with the heads of the Revolution of the world. What scruple would he have, any more than his predecessor, Nubius, in urging on a few men whom he despised, to revolution; and then using means to strangle their efforts and themselves if necessary. It was good policy in the sight of some at least of his colleagues, to manifest Ireland as revolutionary, especially when such a man as Palmerston had all the threads of the conspiracy which aimed at the revolution in his hand. They knew that he knew where to send his spies, and thwart at the opportune moment the whole movement. He could cause insurrections to be made in the most insane manner, as to time and place, just as they were made, and cover the conspirators with easy defeat and ridicule.

However this may be, the Fenian movement after being nursed in America, appeared in Ireland, as a society founded upon lines not very unlike those of the Carbonari of Italy. It was Illuminated Freemasonry with, of course, another name, in order not to avert the pious Catholic men it meant to seduce and destroy from its ranks. But being what it was, it could not long conceal its innate, determined hostility to the Catholic religion; and it proved itself in Ireland, and wherever it took a hold of the people in the three kingdoms, one of the most formidable enemies to the souls of the Irish people that had ever appeared.

When I say this, do not imagine that I mean for a single moment to infer, that many of those who joined it, held or knew its views. If all I have hitherto stated proves anything, it is this: The nature of the infernal conspiracy which we are considering is essentially hypocritical. It comes as Freemasonry comes, with a lie in its mouth. It comes under false pretences always. So it came to Italy under the name of Carbonarism. It came not only professing the purest Catholic religion, but absolutely made the saying of prayers, the frequentation of the sacraments, the open confession of the Faith, and devotion to the Vicar of Christ, a matter of obligation. I do not believe that Fenianism came to Ireland with so many pious professions. But it came in the guise of patriotism, which in Ireland, for many centuries, was so bound up with religion, that in the minds of the peasantry, one became inseparably connected with the other. The friend of one was looked upon as the friend of the other; and the enemy of the one was regarded as the enemy of the other. Hence, in the minds of the Irish, in my own boyhood, the French who came over under Hoche, were regarded as Catholic. The Irish would have it, that France was then as it was when the “wild geese” went over to fight for the Bourbons, a Catholic nation. The truth was, of course, quite the other way; but so long were the Irish people accustomed to regard the French as Catholic, that they still cherished the delusion, and would hear or believe nothing to the contrary. It was enough, therefore, for Fenianism to appear in the guise of a national movement meant to free the country from Protestant England, that it should without question be looked upon as—at least in the first instance—essentially Catholic. Nevertheless, after its leaders had gone to Paris to study the methods of the French and Italian Carbonari, and returned to create circles and centres on the plan of the Vendite of the Italians, they showed a large amount of the Infidel spirit of the men they found in France, and determined to spread it in Ireland. They well knew that the Catholic clergy would be sure to oppose and denounce them as would every wise and really patriotic man in the country. The utter impossibility of any military movement which could be made by any available number of destitute Irish peasantry, succeeding at the time, was in itself reason enough why men of any humanity, not to speak at all of the clergy, should endeavour to dissuade the people from the mad enterprise of the Fenians. Every good and experienced Irishman; Smith O’Brien; the editors of the Nation; and others did so; yet strange to say, the leaders of the disastrous movement, the Irish, and the American organizers, were permitted by the English Government, at least so long as Lord Palmerston lived, to act almost as they pleased in Ireland. The Government knew, that while impotent to injure England, these agitators and conspirators were doing the work which English anti-Catholic hate desired to do, more effectively than any delusion, or bribe, or persecution which heresy had been able to invent. They were undermining the Faith of the people and destroying secretly but surely that love and respect for the clergy which had distinguished the country ever since the days of St. Patrick. A paper edited by one of these men, was circulated for at least two years in the homes of nearly all the population. It contained, to be sure, much incitement to revolution; but it contained also that which in Lord Palmerston’s eyes compensated for the kind of revolution Fenians could make a thousand fold—it contained the most able, virulent, and subtle attacks upon the clergy. This paper remained undisturbed until Palmerston passed away, and affairs in America made Fenianism a real danger for his successors in office. Its issues contained letters written in its own office, but purporting to come from various country parishes, calumniating many of the most venerable of the priests of the people. Men who so loved their flocks as to sacrifice all for them during the famine years—men who had lived with them from youth to old age, were now so artfully assailed as foes of their country’s liberation, that the people maddened and deluded by such attacks, passed them on the road without the usual loving salutation Catholics in Ireland give to and receive from their priests. The secret sect backed up the action of the newspaper. Its leaders got the “word of command” for that purpose, and had to be obeyed. Matters proceeded daily from bad to worse, until at last Divine Providence manifested clearly the deadly designs against religion underlying the Fenian movement, and the people of Ireland recoiled from it and were saved.

And then it was hard to keep, even the leaders themselves, bad to the end. At death, few of them like to face the God they have outraged, without reconciliation. But in life these men, like the informers with whom they are so often in alliance, do desperate things to deceive first, and then, for a passing interest, to ruin their unfortunate dupes afterwards. For my own part, I am of opinion that the man who deludes a number of brave young hearts to rush into a murderous enterprise, hopeless from the outset, is as dangerous as the man who seduces men to become assassins and then sacrifices their lives to save his own neck from the halter. At most there is but the difference of degree in the guilt and malignity of the leaders who urged on impetuous youth to such risings as those of the snowstorms in 1867, and of the scoundrel who planned assassination, entrapped and excited the same kind of youth to execute it, and then swore their lives away to save himself from his justly deserved doom. I am led to this conclusion inevitably from the account given of the Fenian rising, by one of the purest Irish patriots of this century, one just gone amidst the tears of his fellow-countrymen, with stainless name, and a career of glorious labour, to his eternal reward. Mr. Alexander M. Sullivan in his interesting “Story of Ireland” says:

“There was up to the last a fatuous amount of delusion maintained by the ‘Head Centre’ on this side of the Atlantic, James Stephens, a man of marvellous subtlety and wondrous powers of plausible imposition; crafty, cunning, and quite unscrupulous as to the employment of means to an end. However, the army ready to hand in America, if not utilized at once, would soon be melted away and gone, like the snows of past winters. So in the middle of 1865 it was resolved to take the field in the approaching autumn.

“It is hard to contemplate this decision or declaration, without deeming it either insincere or wicked on the part of the leader or leaders, who at the moment knew the real condition of affairs in Ireland. That the enrolled members, howsoever few, would respond when called upon, was certain at any time; for the Irish are not cowards; the men who joined this desperate enterprise were sure to prove themselves courageous, if not either prudent or wise. But the pretence of the revolutionary chief, that there was a force able to afford the merest chance of success, was too utterly false not to be plainly criminal.

“Towards the close of 1865 came almost contemporaneously the Government swoop on the Irish Revolutionary executive, and the deposition—after solemn judicial trial, as prescribed by the laws of the society—of O’Mahony, the American ‘Head Centre,’ for crimes and offences alleged to be worse than mere imbecility, and the election in his stead of Colonel William R. Roberts, an Irish American merchant of high standing and honourable character, whose fortune had always generously aided Irish patriotic, charitable, or religious purposes. The deposed official, however, did not submit to the application of the society rules. He set up a rival association, a course in which he was supported by the Irish Head Centre; and a painful scene of factious and acrimonious contention between the two parties thus antagonised, caused the English Government to hope—nay, for a moment, fully to believe—that the disappearance of both must soon follow.”

Mr. A. M. Sullivan, after speaking of the history of the Fenian movement in America, continues:—

“This brief episode at Ridgeway was for the confederated Irish the one gleam to lighten the page of their history for 1866. That page was otherwise darkened and blotted by a record of humiliating and disgraceful exposures in connection with the Irish Head Centre. In autumn of that year he proceeded to America, and finding his authority repudiated and his integrity doubted, he resorted to a course which it would be difficult to characterize too strongly. By way of attracting a following to his own standard, and obtaining a flush of money, he publicly announced that in the winter months close at hand, and before the new year dawned, he would (sealing his undertaking with an awful invocation of the Most High) be in Ireland, leading the long-promised insurrection. Had this been a mere ‘intention’ which might be ‘disappointed,’ it was still manifestly criminal thus to announce to the British government, unless, indeed, his resources in hand were so enormous as to render England’s preparations a matter of indifference. But it was not as an ‘intention’ he announced it and swore to it. He threatened with the most serious personal consequences any and every man soever, who might dare to express a doubt that the event would come off as he swore. The few months remaining of the year flew by; his intimate adherents spread the rumour that he had sailed for the scene of action, and in Ireland the news occasioned almost a panic. One day, towards the close of December however, all New York rang with the exposure that Stephens had never quitted for Ireland, but was hiding from his own enraged followers in Brooklyn. The scenes that ensued were such as may well be omitted from these pages. In that bitter hour thousands of honest impulsive, and self-sacrificing Irishmen endured the anguish of discovering that they had been deceived as never had men been before; that an idol worshipped with phrenzied devotion was, after all, a thing of clay.”

The plottings of the “Head Centre,” however, were not at an end. Mr. A. M. Sullivan continues:—

“In Ireland, where Stephens had been most implicitly believed in, the news of this collapse—which reached early in 1867—filled the circles with keen humiliation. The more dispassionate wisely rejoiced that he had not attempted to keep a promise, the making of which was in itself a crime; but the desire to wipe out the reproach supposed to be cast on the whole enrolment by his public defection became so overpowering, that a rising was arranged to come off simultaneously all over Ireland on the 5th March, 1867.

“Of all the insensate attempts at revolution recorded in history, this one assuredly was preëminent. The most extravagant of the ancient Fenian tales supplies nothing more absurd. The inmates of a lunatic asylum could scarcely have produced a more impossible scheme. The one redeeming feature in the whole proceeding was the conduct of the hapless men who engaged in it. Firstly, their courage in responding to such a summons at all, unarmed and unaided as they were. Secondly, their intense religious feeling. On the days immediately preceding the 5th March, the Catholic churches were crowded by the youth of the country, making spiritual preparations for what they believed would be a struggle in which many would fall and few survive. Thirdly, their noble humanity to the prisoners whom they captured, their scrupulous regard for private property, and their earnest anxiety to carry on their struggle without infraction in aught of the laws and rules of honourable warfare.

“In the vicinity of Dublin, and in Tipperary, Cork, and Limerick counties, attacks were made on the police stations, several of which were captured by or surrendered to the insurgents. But a circumstance as singular as any recorded in history intervened to suppress the movement more effectually than the armies and fleets of England ten times told could do. On the next night following the rising—the 6th March—there commenced a snowstorm which will long be remembered in Ireland, as it was probably without precedent in our annals. For twelve days and nights without intermission, a tempest of snow and sleet raged over the land, piling snow to the depth of yards on all the mountains, streets, and highways. The plan of the insurrection evidently had for its chief feature desultory warfare in the mountain districts, but this intervention of the elements utterly frustrated the project, and saved Ireland from the horrors of a protracted struggle.”

Who that reads over this brief history of the contest between the Fenian leaders and the priesthood of Ireland, may not see the wisdom and goodness of the religious guides of the people, and the reckless cruelty and callousness of the secret society seducers? It was a life and death struggle. The true friends of the people could not look on and see them led to ruin of soul and body. They knew by a Light from on high, more certain than any that guides ships from danger, the real nature of the secret conspiracy that laid its meshes to deceive, to ruin, and to betray. They raised the warning voice, and for this were secretly assailed, maligned, circumvented, and even threatened in body, in life, in means, and in character. But the minister of God is not to be deterred by any such menaces. He that in the penal days braved the dungeon and the halter for them, and who every day braves pestilence, want, and death if necessary for their sakes, who is of them and with them from the cradle to the grave, whose only interest is their interest, has surely more claims upon their love and allegiance than any conspirator. We learn wisdom from the end of all the secret-society seducers—men first seduced themselves, and who then try to seduce others. But surely the Irish people and the young men of Ireland especially, have had experience enough of the whole lot of them. All seduce them into fatal courses under pretence of benefiting Ireland. Nearly all sell and betray them. All profit—if profit their wretched gain can be called—by the folly of our too fervid, too generous, too confiding youth.

Some of these same seducers are found, I am informed, plying their deadly trade amongst Irish working men in the large manufacturing districts of England and Scotland. For aught I know they may be found in this very city or its neighbourhood. They certainly are no friends of the Irish working man or of his family. Hopeless and criminal as were the Fenian conspiracies, the attempts of these openly lecturing, or worse still, secretly agitating, secret-society seducers, are much worse. At best they are idlers who, instead of devoting themselves to honest toil, find it more congenial and easy to live upon the “subscriptions” of poor working men, who give to these oily-tongued vagabonds a portion of their hard earnings “to liberate Ireland.” God help us! To liberate Ireland by means of such heartless schemers, who would be only too happy to sell Ireland and their dupes into the bargain, for a wonderfully small consideration. It is well if these dangerous prowlers do not do worse and “swear in” some incautious, hot-headed, simple boys into societies which are seen to eventually bring the prison plank-bed if not the halter. The Irish working man in England, in Scotland, or in America, has no worse enemy than these itinerant agitators who perambulate the country, creating excitement at one time, and encouraging secret-society practices at another. They render the condition of the Irish working man often intolerable. They lead him from home and to the public house. They encourage him in the worst possible habits for himself and his little family. They drag him from his God, from his religion, and often to his ruin. The best way, believe me, for the Irish working man to serve Ireland in this country is to keep strictly sober, to mind his employment, to attend well to the Catholic education of his children, to live frugally, to practise economy, to become a respectable member of society. He will then have a voice and a voice that will be heard in the land, and when he comes to use the franchise he will benefit his fellows, and do something real and tangible in the Parliament of England, to serve Ireland. The victim of the secret society agitators is kept in his vices and drunkenness. He is never religious. He lives in rags and wretchedness, and dies in the workhouse or in the gaol.

XXIII. The sad ending of Conspirators.

Nor can there be a spectacle presented by history more sad than the fate of the unfortunate Fenian leaders. The Irish who have died directly for their faith in the dungeon, on the rack, or upon the gibbet, have had the crowning consolation of martyrdom and the bright light of heaven when their sufferings were over. Those who fell victims of extermination, of hunger, want, and exile, might, at least indirectly, trace their sorrows to the same cause—grand, unalterable fidelity to the Church of God. The martyr’s hope lit up their lives. The joy they had even in famine, even in death, no man could take from them. From their perishing bodies came forth the radiance of immortality. Their souls, naturally, the noblest souls, the most gifted, the very purest, given by God to this earth, conquered the very world that scorned and crucified them, with Him they loved and feared not to follow. They endured the pangs of starvation, cold and rags just as they did the gaol, the fever-ship, and the gallows, with a sublime, godlike fortitude. Godlike, for it came from God indeed. Who ever heard of one of these millions of slowly-tormented victims seeking death by suicide—the remedy of the disbeliever? Who ever knew of one of them to seek to lengthen life by means which a section now condones, indeed half praises, in the case of the no more than equally tried man-slayers and cannibals in a shipwreck? Who that remembers the dread years of the great famine of ’47 and ’48 does not know of thousands and of tens of thousands of Irishmen and Irishwomen, aye, of Irish little children, that then laid down their lives in horrible agonies, sooner than receive from a hellish so-called “charity” the food, clothing, and patronage that would enable them to live in comfort,—a “charity” which callous proselytizers offered everywhere at the price of one single act of apostasy—at the price of even eating meat on a Friday in contempt of God’s Church? I myself have known of such cases. And I have seen this. I have seen downright honest pity manifested by these same starving but noble people of God for the rich man who lived in wealthy splendour, and then died in a great house near them, when they knew that by want of the Faith he ought to have, his life was without hope and his eternity without God. Never since the days of Christ did a whole people realize more vividly or act more truly upon the teaching conveyed in the parable of the rich man lost and Lazarus saved. The long eternity of hell, the want of the drop of water, never to be obtained, the eternal contempt and the eternal pain awaiting the sumptuously-living sinner, was no myth. It came from the mouth of Him who had the knowledge of the fact, because he was the Creator and the Judge. As vividly came the vision of their own bright, peaceful, wealthy rest, figured by the lot of Lazarus reposing in a bosom far brighter, far sweeter than that of Abraham—in the Heart of Jesus Christ, in the beautiful vision of God, in the embrace of Mary, the loved Mother of Ireland—and so these millions passed peacefully through the dark valley of famine, until, worn and weary, their bodies sank like the rain drops, forgotten, beneath the green sward of Erin, and their souls passed for ever to the joy of the blest. How different is the case of the few apostates amongst them who sold their faith! Who may not tell of the agony of mind, the desolation, the suicides of these? But next to them in melancholiness is the fate of the Irishman who first begins to listen to the seducer of the secret society, and afterwards becomes himself a seducer, a leader, perhaps a traitor, in the deadly, secret conspiracy to ruin religion, to destroy God. His career is often this: At first a hopeful, young, ambitious student of his country’s history, he begins to feel indignation at her wrongs, and wishes to right them. In a fatal hour he meets the tempter. He is sworn into the terrible sect. He gets a command, an importance in the organization. He is youthful, but the season of life wherein to make an honest livelihood passes rapidly in intrigue. He knows that the course into which he has fallen is bad, is injurious to religion, but he hopes to repent. Alas! little by little his conscience, his Faith passes from him. The day comes surely when he realizes his sad position, and knows the advice of the Church to be right. But having lived his best days to conspire, he now must “conspire to live,” and inured to bad habits, he is at last ready for anything. Like the wretch who preys upon the little left to the Irish emigrant, now as a guide, now as a broker in New York or Liverpool, he, too, will wrench by every means fraud can devise the hard earnings of the poor, under pretence of injuring England, if not of liberating Ireland. He will stop at nothing, and so the existing conspirator is made. He has no further scruple to join if he can the worst class of the Atheistic and Socialist plotters of Paris. He herds with them. And this is strange, for while the Irish conspirator may be as able to plot mischief as the worst of the miscreants with whom he associates in France, he differs from them in this, that in the secret of his soul he never loses his Faith. They know this well, and they watch him, use him, but never fully trust him. Many a broken Irish heart the children of the Revolution in Paris have made already. Many a one of those Irish victims wish again for the days of his boyish innocence and blessed faith. A life wasted, hopes blasted, happiness departed, a cheerless, neglected, old age, are little recompense for the free-thought and free-act which a system of Atheism and irreligion, never really believed in, conferred upon any Catholic Irishman.