booknetsaWebster-secretSocietiesAndSubversiveMovements

been and will be the authors of present and future revolutions. We must assure princes and peoples, on our
honour and our duty, that our association is in no way guilty of these evils. But in order that our attestations
should have force and merit belief, we must make for princes and people a complete sacrifice; so as to cut
out to the roots the abuse and error, we must from this moment dissolve the whole Order. This is why we
destroy and annihilate it completely for the time; we will preserve the foundations for posterity, which will
clear them when humanity, in better times, can derive some benefit from our holy alliance.[37]
Thus, in the opinion of the Grand Master of German Freemasonry, a secret sect working within Freemasonry
had brought about the French Revolution and would be the cause of all future revolutions. We shall
now pursue the course of this sect after the first upheaval had ended.
Three years after the Duke of Brunswick issued his Manifesto to the lodges, the books of Barruel,
Robison, and others appeared, laying bare the whole conspiracy. It has been said that all these books " fell
flat."[38] This is directly contrary to the truth. Barruel's book went into no less than eight editions, and I
have described elsewhere the alarm that his work and Robison's excited in America. In England they led to
the very tangible result that a law was passed by the English Parliament in 1799 prohibiting all secret societies
with the exception of Freemasonry.
It is evident, then, that the British Government recognized the continued existence of these associations
and the danger they presented to the world. This fact should be borne in mind when we are assured that
Barruel and Robison had conjured up a bogey which met with no serious attention from responsible men.
For the main purpose of Barruel's book is to show that not only had Illuminism and Grand Orient Masonry
contributed largely to the French Revolution, but that three years after that first explosion they were still as
active as ever. This is the great point which the champions of the "bogey" theory are most anxious to refute.
"The Bavarian Order of the Illuminati," wrote Mr. Waite, " was founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776, and it
was suppressed by the Elector of Bavaria in 1789.... Those who say that 'it was continued in more secret
forms' have never produced one item of real evidence."[39] Now, as we have seen, the Illuminati were not
suppressed by the Elector of Bavaria in 1789, but in 1786-first error of Mr. Waite. But more extraordinary
confusion of mind is displayed in his Encyclopædia of Freemasonry, where, in a Masonic Chronology, he
gives, this time under the date of 1784, " Suppression of the Illuminati," but under 1793: "J.J.C. Bode
joined the Illuminati under Weishaupt." At a matter of fact, this was the year Bode died. These examples
will serve to show the reliance that can be placed on Mr. Waite's statement concerning the Illuminati.
We shall now see that not only the Illuminati but Weishaupt himself still continued to intrigue long after
the French Revolution had ended.
Directly the Reign of Terror was over, the masonic lodges, which during the Revolution had been replaced
by the clubs, began to reopen, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century were in a more flourishing
condition than ever before. " It was the most brilliant epoch of Masonry," wrote the Freemason Bazot
in his History of Freemasonry. Nearly 1,200 lodges existed in France under the Empire; generals, magistrates,
artists, savants, and notabilities in every line were initiated into the Order.[40] The most eminent of
these was Prince Cambacérès, pro Grand Master of the Grand Orient.
It is in the midst of this period that we find Weishaupt once more at work behind the scenes of Freemasonry.
Thus in the remarkable masonic correspondence published by M. Benjamin Fabre in his Eques a
Capite Galeato-of which, as has already been pointed out, the authenticity is admitted by eminent British
Freemasons-a letter is reproduced from Pyron, representative in Paris of the Grand Orient of Italy, to the
Marquis de Chefdebien, dated September 9, 1808, in which it is stated that " a member of the sect of Bav."
has asked for information on a certain point of ritual.
On December 29, 1808, Pyron writes again: " By the words ' sect of B....' I meant W......; and on
December 3, 1809, puts the matter quite plainly: " The other word remaining at the end of my pen refers enigmatically
to Weis=pt."
So, as M. Fabre points out: There is no longer any doubt that it is a question here of Weishaupt, and yet
one observes that his name is not yet written in all its letters. It must be admitted here that Pyron took great
precautions when it was a matter of Weishaupt ! And one is led to ask what could be the extraordinary importance
of the rôle played at this moment in the Freemasonry of the First Empire by this Weishaupt, who
was supposed to have been outside the masonic movement since Illuminism was brought to trial in 1786 !
[41]
But the Marquis de Chefdebien entertained no illusions about Weishaupt, whose intrigues he had always
opposed, and in a letter dated May 12, 1806, to the Freemason Roettiers, who had referred to the danger of
isolated masonic lodges, he asks: In good faith, very reverend brother, is it in isolated lodges that the atro-
Nesta H. Webster — Secret Societies and Subversive Movements — Part I
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