M. Demousseaux cites the opinion (p. 368) of a Protestant statesman in the

service of a great German Power, who wrote to him in December, 1865, " at the outbreak of the revolution of 1845 I found myself in relation with a Jew who by vanity betrayed the secret of the secret societies to which he was associated, and who informed me eight or ten days in advance, of all the revolutions which were
LORD PALMERSTON. 05
the centre of Europe, under the house of Brandenburg ; next to weaken Austrian dominion ; then to annihihite the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, by the formation of a United Kingdom of Italy under the provisional government of the house of Savoy; and lastly, to form of the discontented Polish, Hungarian, and Slavonian populations, an independent kingdom between Austria and Kussia.
After an interval during which these plans were hatched, Palmerston returned to office in 1846, and then the influence of England was seen at work, in the many revolutions which broke out in Europe within eighteen months afterwards. If these partly failed, they eventuated at least in giving a Masonic Euler to France in the person of the Carbonaro, Louis Napoleon. With him Palmerston instantly joined the fortunes of England, and with him he plotted for the realization of his Masonic ideas to the very end of his career. Now here comes a most important event, proving beyond question the determination of Palmerston to sacrifice his country to the designs of the sect he ruled. The Conservative feeling in England shrank from acknowledging I-ouis Napoleon or approving of his coup d'etat. The country began to grow afraid of revolutionists, crowned or" uncrowned. This feeling was shared by the Sovereign, by the Cabinet, and by the Parliament, so far that Lord Derby was able to move a vote of censure on the Government, because of the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston. For Palmerston, confiding in the secret strength he wielded, and which was not without its influence in England herself, threw every consideration of loyalty, duty, and honour overboard, and without consulting his Queen or his colleagues, he sent, as Foreign Secretary, the recognition of
to break out upon every point of Europe. I owe to him the iminovable con- viction tliat all these grand movements of 'oppressed people' &c., &c., are managed by a half-a-dozen individuals who give their advice to the secret societies of the entire of Europe."
Henry Misley, a great authority also, wrote to Pere Deschamps, "I know the world a little, and I know that in all that ' grand future ' which is being pre- pared, there are not more than fom' or five persons who hold the cards. A great niunber think they hold them, but they deceive themselves."
96 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
England to Louis Napoleon. He committed England to the Empire, and the other nations of Europe had to follow suit.
On this point, Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Art. " Palmerston,'' has the following notice : — "In December, 1852, the public was startled at the news that Palmerston was no longer a member of the Eussell Cabinet. He had expressed his approbation of the coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon (gave England's official acknow- ledgment of the perpetration) without consulting either the Premier or the Queen ; and as explanations were refused, Her Majesty exercised her constitutional right of dismissing her minister." Palmerston had also audaciously interpolated despatches signed by the Queen. He acted in fact as he pleased. He had the agents of his dark realm in almost every Masonic lodge in England. The Press at home and abroad, under Masonic influences, applauded his policy. The sect so acted that his measures were productive of immediate success. His manner, his bonhomie^ his very vices fascinated the multitude. He won the confidence of the trading classes, and held the Conser- vatives at bay. Dismissed by the Sovereign, he soon returned into power her master, and from that day to the day of his death ruled England and the world in the interests of the Atheistic Kevolution, of which he thought himself the master spirit.'
1 INIr. F. Hugh O'DonneU, the able M.P. for Dimgarvan, contributed to the pages of the Dublin Freeman s Journal a most useful and interesting paper which showed on his part a careful study of the works of Monsgr. Segm* and other continental authorities on Freemasonry, In this, he says, regarding his own recollections of contemporary events : — " It is now many years since I heard from my lamented master and friend, the Rev. Sir Christopher Bellew, of the Society of Jesus, these impressive words. Speaking of the tireless machinations and ubiquitous influence of Lord Palmerston against the temporal independence of the Popes, Sir Christopher Bellew said : —
" Lord Palmerston is much more than a hostile statesman. He woidd never have such influence on the Continent if he were only an English Cabinet ]\Iinister. But he is a Freemason and one of the highest and greatest of Freemasons. It is he who sends what is called the Patriarchal Voice through the lodges of Em-ope. And to obtain that rank he must have given the most extreme proofs of his insatiable hatred to the Catholic Church."
"Another illustration of the manner in which European events are moved by hidden currents was given me by the late Major-General Burnaby, M.P., a quiet and amiable soldier, who, though to all appearance one of the most miobtrusive of men, was employed in some of the most delicate and important work of British policy in the East. General Burnaby was commissioned to obtain and
WAR OF TITE INTELLECTUAL PARTY, 97
In a few moments we shall see the truth of this when con- sidermg the political action of the sect he led, but first it will be necessary to glance at what the Church and Christianity generally had to suffer in his day by the —
XVIIL
War of the Intellectual Party. During what may be called the reign of Palmerston, the war of the intellectual party against Christianity, intensified in the dark counsels of the Alta Vendita, became accentuated and general throughout Europe. It chiefly lay in the propagandism of immorality, luxury, and naturalism amongst all classes of society, and then in the spread of Atheistic and revolutionary ideas. During the time of Palmerston's influence not one iota of the advices of the Alta Vendita was permitted to be wasted. Wherever, therefore, it was possible to advance the programme mapped out in the " Permanent Instruction," in the letter of Piccolo Tigre^ and in the advices of Vindex, that was done with effect. We see, therefore, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, America, and the rest of the world, deluged with immoral novels, immodest prints, pictures, and statues, and every legislature invited to legalise a system of prostitution, under
preserve the names and addresses of all the Italian members of the foreign legion enlisted for the British service in the Crimean War. This was in 1855 and 1856. After the war these men, mostly reckless and unscrupulous characters — "fearful scoimdrels " General Burnaby called them — dispersed to their native provinces, but the clue to find them again was in General Bm-naby's hands, and when a couple of years later Cavoirr and Palmerston, in conjimction with the Masonic lodges, considered the moment opportune to let loose the Italian Revolution, the list of the Italian foreign legion was commmiicated to the Sardinian Government and was placed in the hands of the Garibaldiau Directory, who at once sought out most of the men. In this way several hmidreds of " fearful scoundrels," who had learned military skill and discipline under the British flag, were supplied to Garibaldi to form the corps of his celebrated " Army of Emancipation " in the two Sicilies and the Roman States. While the British chplomatists at Turin and Naples carried on, under cover of their character as envoys, the dangerous portion of the Carbonarist conspii^acy, the taxpayers of Great Britain contributed iu this manner to raise and train an army destined to confiscate the possessions of the Religious Orders and the Church in Italy, and, in its remoter operation, to assail, and, if possible, destroy the world-wide mission of the IIolv Propaganda itself.
H
98 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
pretence of expediency, which gave security to sinners, and a kind of recognized status to degraded women. We find, wherever Masonry could effect it, these bad influences brought to bear upon the universities, the army, the navy, the training schools, the civil service, and upon the whole population. " Make corrupt hearts and you will have no more Catholics," said Vindex, and faithfully, and with effect, the secret societies of. Europe have followed that advice. Hence, in Finance under the Empire, Paris, bad enough before, became a very pandemonium of vice ; and Italy just in proportion to the con- quests of the Revolution, became systematic^ally corrupted on the very lines laid down by the Alta Yendita.
Next, laws subversive of Christian morality were caused to be passed in every State, on, of course, the most plausible pretexts. These laws were, first, that of divorce, then, the abolition of impediments to marriage, such as consanguinity, order, and relationship, union with a deceased wife's sister, etc. Well the infidels knew that in proportion as nations fell away from the holy restraints of the Church, and as the sanctity and inviolability of the marriage bond became weakened, the more Atheism would enter into the human family.
Moreover, the few institutions of a public, Christian nature yet remaining in Christian States were to be removed one after another on some skilfully devised, plausible plea. The Sabbath .which in the Old as well as in the New Dispensation, proved so great an advantage to religion and to man — to nations as well as to individuals — was marked out for desecration. The leniency of the Church which permitted certain necessary works on Sunday, was taken advantage of, and the day adroitly turned into one of common trading in all the great towns of Catholic Conti- nental Europe. The Infidels, owing to a previous determination arrived at in the lodges, clamoured for permission to open museums and places of public amusement on the days sacred to the services of religion, in order to distract the population from the hearing of Mass and the worship of God. Not that they cared for the
WAR OF THE INTELLECTUAL PARTY. 99
unfortunate working man. If tlie Sabbath ceased to-morrow, he would be the slave on Sunday that they leave him to be during the rest of the week. The one day of rest would be torn from the labouring population, and their lot drawn nearer than before to that absolute slavery which always did exist, and would exist again, under every form of Idolatry and Infidelity. Pending the reduction of men to Socialism, the secret conclave directing the whole mass of organized Atheism has therefore taken care that in order to withdraw the working man from attending divine worship and the hearing of the Word of God, theatres, cafes, pleasure gardens, drinking saloons, and other still worse means of popular enjoyment shall ])e made to exert the utmost influence on him upon that day. This sad influence is beginning to be felt amongst ourselves. Then, besides the suppression of State recognition to religion, chaplains to the army, the navy, the hospitals, the prisons, etc., were to be with- drawn on the plea of expense or of being unnecessary. Courts of justice, and public assemblies were to be deprived of every Christian symbol. This was to be done on the plea of religion being too sacred to be permitted to enter into such places. In courts, in society, at dinners, etc., Christian habits, like that of grace before meals, etc., or any social recognition of God's presence, were to be scouted -as not in good taste. The company of ecclesiastics was to be shunned, and a hundred other able means were devised to efface the Christian aspect of the nations until they presented an appearance more devoid of religion than that of the very pagans.
But of all the attacks made by Infidels during the reign of Palmerston, that upon primary, middle-class, and superior education was the most marked, the most - determined, and decidedly, when successful, the most disastrous.
We must remember that from the commencement of the war of Atheism on Christianity, under Voltaire and the Encyclo- paedists, this means of doing mischief was the one most advocated by the chief leaders. They then accumulated immense sums to
100 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
diffuse their own bad literature amongst every class. Under the Empire, the most disastrous blow struck by the Arch-Mason 1 alleyrand was the formation of a monopoly of education for Infidelity in the foundation of the Paris University. But it was left for the Atheistic plotters of this century to perfect the plan of wresting the education of every class and sex of the coming generations of men from out of the hands of the Church, and the influence of Christianity.
This plan was elaborated as early, I think, as 1826, by intellectual Masonry, About that time appeared a dialogue between Quinet and Eugene Sue, in which after the manner of the letter of Vindex to Nubius the whole programme of the now progressing education war was sketched out. In this the hopes which Masonry had from Protestantism in countries where the population was mixed, were clearly expressed. The jealousy of rival sects was to be excited, and when they could not agree, then the State was to be induced to do away with all kinds of religion "just for peace sake," and establish schools on a purely secular basis, entirely removed from " clerical control," and handed over to lay teachers, whom in time Atheism could find means to " control " most surely. But in purely Catholic countries, where such an argument as the differences of sects could not be adduced, then the cry was to be against clerical versus lay teaching. Eeligious teachers were to be banished by the strong hand, as at present in France, and afterwards it could be said that lay teachers were not competent or willing to give religious instruction, and so that, too, in time, could be made to disappear.^
^ The late celebrated MonsignorDupanloup published, in 1875, an invaluable little treatise, in which he gave, from the expressions of the most eminent Masons in France and elsewhere, from the resolutions taken in principal lodges, and from the opinions of their chief literary organs, proofs that what i? here stated is correct. The following extracts regarding education wiU show what Masonry has been doing in regard to that most vital question. Monsignor Dupanloup says: — " In the great lodge called the " Rose of Perfect Silence," it was proposed at one time for the consideration of the brethren : — " Ought religious education be suppressed?" This was answered as follows : — " Without any doubt " the principle of supernatural authority, that is faith in God, takes from a man " his dignity ; is useless for the discipline of children, and there is also in it, the " danger of tlae abandonment of all morality " . , " The respect, specially due
WAR OF THE INTELLECTUAL TARTY. 101
We may here call to mind the fact that it was while Lord Palmerston directed Masomy as Monarch, and English policy as Minister, that secularism was insidiously attempted to be intro- duced into higher education in Ireland by Queen's Colleges, and into primary education by certain acts of the Board of National Education. The fidelity of the Irish Episcopacy and the ever vigilant watchfulness of the Holy See, disconcerted both plans, or neutralized them to a great extent. Attempts of a like kind are being made in England, There, by degrees, board schools with almost unlimited assistance from taxes have been first made legal,
" to the child, prohibits the teaching to him of doctrines, which distiirb his " reason."
To show the reason of the activity of the Masons, all the world over, for the diffusion of irreligioi;s education, it will be sufficient to quote the view of the the Monde Ma^onniqtie on tlie subject. It says, in its issue of May 1st, 1865, "An immense field is open to our acti-^ity. Ignorance and superstition weigh " upon the world. Let us seek to create schools, professorial chairs, libraries." Impelled by the general movement thus infused into the body, the Masonic (French) Convention of 1870, came unanimously to the following decision : — " The Masonry of France associates itself to the forces at work in the country " to render education gratuitous, obligatory, and laic."
We have all heard how far Belgium has gone in pursuit of these Masonic aims at Infidel education. At one of the principal festivals of the Belgian Freemasons a certain brother Boulard exclaimed, amidst miiversal applause, "When ministers shall come to announce to the country that they intend to regulate the education of the people I will cry aloud, " to me a Mason, to me alone the question of education must be left ; to me the teaching ; to me the examination ; to me the solution."
Monsgr. Dupanloup also attacked the Masonic project of having professional schools for young girls, such as are now advocated in the Australian colonies and elsewhere in English-speaking comitries. At the time, the movement was but just being initiated in France, but it could not deceive him. In a pamphlet, to which all the Bishops of France adhered, and which was therefore called the Alarm of the Episcopate, he showed clearly that these schools had two faces : — on one of which was written " Professional Instruction for Girls," and on the otlier, " Away with Christianity in life and death." "Without woman," said Brother Albert Leroy, at an International Congress of Masons, at Paris, in 1867, " all the men united can do nothing " — nothing to effectually de-Christianize the world.
The French " Education League " had the same object. At the time it was introduced, the lodges were busy with getting up a statue to Voltaire. And the Monde Ma(onm(]ue, speaking of both, said in April, 1867 : —
" May the Education League and the statue of Brother Voltaire find in all " the lodges the most lively sympathy. We could not have two subscriptions " more in harmony ; Voltaire, that is the destruction of prejudices and supersti- " tions : the Education League, that is the building up of a new society '• founded solely upon science and upon instruction. All our brethren imdorstand " the matter in this manner."
It is needless to remark here that by " superstition " the Monde Ma^onniqiie means religion, and, by " science and instruction," these acquirements, not only without, but du'ectly hostile to religion. This newspaper constantly teaches
102 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
nnd then encouraged most adroitly. The Church schools have been systematically discouraged, and hav^e now reached the point of danger. This has been effected, first, by the Masonry of Palmerston in the high places, and, secondly, by the Masonry of England generally, not in actual league and knowingly, with the dark direction I speak of, but unknowingly influenced by its well-devised cries for the spread of light, for the diffusion of education amongst the masses, for the banishment of rehgious discord, etc. It was, of course, never mentioned, that all the advantages cried up could be obtained, together with the still greater advantage of a Christian education, producing a future Christian population. It was sedulously kept out of sight that the people who would be certain to use board schools, were those who never went themselves to any church, and who would never
that all religions are so many darknesses, that Masonry is the light ; that God, the soul, the life to coine, are nothing but suppositions and fantasies, and that, as a consequence, a man ought to be reared up independent of every kind of Christianity. Therefore, it adds, "All masons ought to adhere in mass to tiie league of instruction, and the lodijcs ought to study in the peace of their temples the best means to render it efficacious. In fact the Education League and JNlasonry are declared to be identical by Brother Mace, who, at a general banquet, drank : — " To the entrance of all Masons into the League. To the entrance into Masonry of all those who form part of the League." " To the trimuph of the light, the watchword common to the League and to Masonry."
In fine, the author of a history of Freemasonry, and one evidently well uj) in its aims, Brother Goffin, writes as follows : —
" Whenever Masonry accords the entrance into its temple to a Hebrew, to a Mahometan, to a Catholic, or to a Protestant, that is done on the condition that he becomes a new man, that he abjures all his past errors, that he rejects the super- stitions in ivhich he ivas cradled from his youth. AVithout all this what has he to do in our Masonic assemblies?"
But as we have seen the great aim of the Alta Vendita, was to corrupt woman, " As we cannot suppress her," said Vindex to Nubius, " let us corrupt her with the Church." The method best adapted for this was to alienate tier from religion by an infidel education. The Freemasons, no doubt, obtained from tlie higher grades the word of command, and, accordingly, proceeded to force, every- where, the establishment of superior schools for young girls where they might be surely deprived of their religion and their morality. In the " Lodge of Benefi- " cence and Progress," at Boulogne, on the 19th of July, 1867, "Massol" thus spoke : " By means of instruction, women will become able to shake off the " clerical yoke, and to liberate themselves from the superstitions which impede " them from occupying themselves with an education in harmony with the spirit " of the age." To give one proof only of this, where is the English, German, or American woman, who to the two religious questions which her own children can propose to her: " Who made the world?" "Do we continue to live after " death ?" would dare to answer that she knew nothing and that no one knew anything about it. Well, then, this boldness the instructed French woman will possess.
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tliink of. giving religious instruction of any kind to their children. Nothing'can shoAvthe power of Freemasonry in a stronger light than the stupor it was able cast over the men who make laws in both Houses of the English Parliament, and who were thus hoodwinked into training up men fitted to take position, wealth, and bread itself, from themselves and their children ; to subject, in another generation, the moneyed classes of Eng- land to the lot that befell other blinded " moneyed people " in France during the last century. In England, the Freemasons had, unfortunately, the Dissenters as allies. Hatred for church schools caused the latter to make common cause with Atheists against God, but the destruction of the Church of England — they do not hope for the destruction of the vigorous Catholic Church of the country — will never compensate even Socinians for a spirit of instructed irreligion in England — a spirit which, in a genei'ation, will be able and only too willing to attempt Atheistic levelling for its own advantage, and certainly not for the benefit of wealthy Dissenters, or Dissenters having anything at all to lose.
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 con- servative 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
104 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
A filial 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 adopfion," lodges for woman, and lodges " androgynes," — lodges for libertine Masons and women — were established by the lUuminati 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 permaneut instruction of the Alta Vendiia, you have already seen how astutely the Atheists compas- sed the corruption of youth in Universities. It is since notorious that in all high schools over which they have been able to obtain infiuence, 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
THE WAR PARTY UNDER PALMERSTON. 105
being affiliated to Masonry ; and the only way to secure advance- ment 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 Propagandisni 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 w^hen Palmerston was no more. As he was
106 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
the principal means of raising Palmerston to power in the Alta Venclita^ so, after Palmerston had passed away, he intro- duced 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 ot 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
THE WAR PARTY UNDER PALMERSTON. 107
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. Ke remembered his grudge against Napoleon, and at once used his influence with the high direction of Masonry to abandon France and assist Germany ; and,onthe promise of Bismarck — a promise fulfilled by the May laws — that Germany should persecute the Church as it Avas 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 Eevolution 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
108 WAR OF ANTICHRIST AVITH THE CHURCH.
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 pro- vided 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 un- bearable extent. The condition of the faithful Catholic peasants became wretched from the load of fiscal burdens placed upon
THE WAR PARTY UNDER TALMERSTON. 100
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 tlie 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. Tlie 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 tlie 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 Wieshaupt, the Alta Veiidita, 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
1 1 0 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
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 leo,ders 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. Sul)ventions 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 Eevolution 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.
THE INTERNATIONAL, THE NIHILISTS, THE BLACK HAND, ETC. Ill
In our day, if Masonry does not found Jacobite or otlier 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 con- dition, 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 them- selves 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. " Nousvoulons^ Messieurs,'^ said Thiers, " la rejmbligue, mais la repuhlique conservatrice.'^ lie and his desired, of course, to have the Republic which gave them all this
112 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
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. Thay 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 Avith what consequence to the vast mass of the people, to the peasantry and the working popu- lation— 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
THE INTERNATIONAL, THE NIHILISTS, THE BLACK HAND, ETC. 113
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 i- 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 mon 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 Free- masons. 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 Free- masons. It is a paradise of Freemasons, where Piedraontese 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 " regime 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.
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He is positively, at present, ground down, in every little town oi 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 con- fiscated 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 insufiicient, is reduced to pizzt, 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 ofi", 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 scld 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,
THE INTERNATIONAL, THE NIHILISTS, THE BLACK HAND, ETC. 115
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 l)read in vain. The religious^ deprived of their possessions, and severely repressed, have no longer food to give. They are fast disappear- ing, 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 " Nuhius in the days of Mazzini. It " removed " Gambetta before our eyes. It aimed frequently at Napoleon III.,
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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 eiFectively. 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 Baurgeoine 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 Egalite to lead the movement against the throne of France in the last century. It had the Duke of Brunswick, Frederick II., and Joseph 11. , 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 Imeage, a representative of the wealthiest,
THE INTERNATIONAL, THE NIHILISTS, TUE BLACK HAND. ETC. 117
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 " re-action." 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.
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The third class comprises all manner of workmen's societies. With these tbe two first mingle, and direct to the profit of the Eevolution. 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 Alia 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 Nuhius found out, it is far mistaken. But the encouragement of murderers as a " skirmish- ing" 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 A Ita 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
THE INTERNATIONAL, THE NiniLISTS, TEE BLACK HAND, ETC. 119
which the diplomacy of the workl 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 fiict. 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 leadmg 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 sanahiles. 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 ihe well-being of individual men and nations ; by rigorously prohibiting every form of secret society for any purpose whatever ; by shutting tlie 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
1 20 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
of Irish discontent finding a vent in dynamite which England has most to fear from anarchy. Its value to the Eevolution 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 Eussia, 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 Avill attempt a convulsion of the Avhole 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 after- wards 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 com- pliance with the advice of our Holy Father, open the eyes of our own people, of our young men especially, to the nature and
FREEMASONRY WITH OURSELVES. 121
atrocity of the evil, that seeing, they may avoid the snare hiid for them by Atheism. To do this Avith 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
XXL
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 Wieshaupt, 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 ?Tien 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,^ 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
1 A curious proof of this fact is preserved in the records of Dublin Castle, where, upon a retimi of the members and officers of Freemasonry, as it is with us, having been asked for by the Government, the names of the delegates from the Irish Lodges to various continental national Grand Lodges were given. I do not place much value upon the fact as a means to connect British Freemasoniy with its kind on the Continent, because the REAL SECRET was, as a nde, kept from British and Irish Masons. But the intercourse had an immense effect in causing the vanguard cries of the Continental lodges to find a fatal support from British Masons in and out of Parliament. These delegates brought back high somiding theories about "education" without " denominationalism," etc., etc., but they were never trusted with the ultimate designs of the Continental directoryto destroy the Throne, the Constitution, and lastly, the very property of British INlasons. These designs are commimicated only to reliable individuals, who know full well the REAL SECRET of the sect — and keep it.
122 WAR or ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
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
FREEMASONRY WITH OURSELVES. 123
piil)lic opinion, already accustomed to the sight of shop ^'indows open on Sundays, woukl 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 after Avards, 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.^
^The Alta Vendita and the intellectual party in Masonry have for a long time endeavonred to revive practices which Christianity did away with, and which were distinctly Pagan. Amongst others they have made every exertion to destroy the Christian respect for the dead, and every respect for the dead which kept alive in the living the belief in the immortality of the soul. Death is with man, a powerful means to keep alive in him a wholesome fear of his Creator, and respect for" religion. Spiritual writers, following the advice of the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures, " Remember thy last end and thou shalt never sin,'' always place before Christians the thought of death as the most wholesome lesson in the spiritual life. The demon from the beginning tried to do away with this salutary thought as the most opposed to liis designs. When Eve feared to eat the forbidden fruit it was because of the terror with which death inspired her. The devil lied in telling her " No, ye shall not die the death." She believed the liar and the mm-derer. His followers in the secret societies established by him, and which he keeps in such unity of aim and action, second his desire to the utmost by doing away with whatever may keep alive in man the thoughts of his last end and of a future resurrection, and, of course, of judgment. Weishaupt taught his disciples to look upon suicide as a praiseworthy means of flymg the horrors of death and present inconvenience. Cremation, instantly destroying the terrors of corruption — the death's head and cross bones — the worst featiu-es in mortality, as exhibited in a corpse, is therefore largely advocated by the secret societies on plausibly de\'ised sanitary, aesthetic, and economical grounds. But it is a pagan practice, opposed to that followed ever since the creation of the world by all that had the know- ledge of the true God in the Primeval, Jewish, and Christian dispensations. The Revolution in Italy has established at Rome, Milan, and Naples means of cremating bodies, and advanced Freemasons, like Garibakh, have in their wills, directed that their bodies shoidd be cremated. A little reflection, however, will show that neither for rich nor poor, for sanitary, for economical or any other reasons can cremation be advocated in preference to buiial. For besides the fact that the
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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
earth which is always the best, safest, and readiest solvent for corruption, may be had everywhere in abiuidance, and at a safe enough distance from cities if so desired, there is the fact before us that the Roman poor and slaves, were thrown into pits to save expense ; while cremation, where practised by the rich, led to most extravagant expenses and excesses. Christians, when they find plausibly given, interesting notices of cremation in journals of any kind, may be quite sure that the writer who writes them is influenced by the secret sect, and these scribes are found everywhere and find means to ventilate their ideas — misuspected by the proprietors — sometimes into journals professedly Catholic. They are advocating, it is thought, a harmless sanitary arrangement not condemned by the Church ; but they are doing all the while, consciously or imconsciously, the work of the secret Atheistic sect. As it is with cremation, so it is with the eating of horse- flesh and other apparently harmless practices advocated by the sectaries solely because in practice or in theory, discoimtenanced by, or not practised by, Christians. When in these days, a distinctive anti-Christian custom is seen advocated without any urgent reason, in the press, now almost entirely in the hands of members of the sect, and generally Jewish members. Christians may fear that the cloven foot is in the matter. The cold water, the ridicule, the contempt thrown upon religious observances, the attempt to rob them of their pm-ely Christian character, are other methods employed by the sects to loosen the influence of Christianity. In opposition to these, Christian people should carefidly study to keep the joy of Christmas, the penitential fasts, the sanctity of Holy Week, the splendoiu- of Easter, the feasts of God's holy Mother and of the saints — to fill themselves, in one word, with the Christian spirit of the Ages of Faith.
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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 tlie first three degrees of the Craft. Oaths flir 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 secresy 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 ^vorshipful " 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
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" 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 " wortliy 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.
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This gesture has reference to the penalty attached to breaking tlie oath. The grip is also a penal sign. It consists of a distinct pressure of the top of the right hond thumb to the first joint fi'oni 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, IN". N., in the presence of the Grand Geometrician ot ^' 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 fu-st 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
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'^ 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 "threefold 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 elbov-^ 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.
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"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 Avill keep the " secrets of the Third Degree froju 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. 1 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
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" 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."
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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 Avould 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 felloAvship. 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 Macbenacii. 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 sufiice for my purpose to bring one fact under your observation. In the ceremonies accompanying initiations, many charges are made to
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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 callednatural 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 fliculty 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 he. 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 pointy 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.
FREEMASONRY AVITU OURSELVES. 133
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 " wlien 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 com- plained of as injurious in trade, politics, and social life. I need not call to youi' 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
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'' 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, tliat precisely the same " association can be carried on under the name of Masonry. This " is an evil that secret associations admit. No form of anythino- 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 Miiller, 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
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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 hidderi 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 associa- tions, 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 —
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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 Eepublic, 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 con- tinued for many years afterwards to distract Ireland. As in Italy, the Illuminati had taught the peasantry of Ireland how to conspire in secret, oatli b(jund, and, of course, often murderous,
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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 con- sisted in placing antagonism between the faithful pastors of the people and the members of those secret societies of Eibbonmen, 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, widespread, 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 move- ment 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 aban- doned 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 JSfuhius, the monarch who preceded Palmerston, that he often betraved into the hands of the Pontifical Govern-
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meiit 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 difiicult 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 iutercouse 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 n(^cessary. 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
FENIANISM. 139
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 Treland, 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 abso- lutely 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 with- out question be looked upon as — at least in the first instance — essentially Catholic. Nevertheless, after its leaders had gone to
140 WAR OF ANIICIIRIST WITH THE CHURCH,
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 tJiousand 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
FENIANISM. 141
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 fi-om 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 tliey 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 Avho 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 stain- less name, and a career of glorious labour, to his eternal reward. Mr. Alexander M. Sullivan in his interesting " Story of Ireland " says :
142 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH,
" 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 un- " scrupulous 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 Avho "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 contempora- " neously 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,
FENIANISM. 143
'' 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 Ridge way 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 Avould 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 Irish- men endured the anguish of discovering that they had been
144 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
" 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 maknig 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 preeminent. The most extra- vagant 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 imme- diately preceding the 5tli March, the Catholic churches were crowded by the youth of the country, making spiritual prepara- tions for what they believed would be a struggle in which many would Ml 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
'W
FENIANISM. 145
" than the armies and fleets of England ten times told could do " On the next night following the rising — the Gtli ]\Iarcli — tliere " 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 con- spirator. 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 wUole lot of them. All seduce them into fiital courses under pretence of benefiting Ireland. Nearly all sell and betray them.
L
146 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
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 con- spiracies, 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 brinsf 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 tlie public house. They encourage him in the worst possible habits for himself and his little fiimily. 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
THE SAD ENDING OF CONSPIRATORS. 147
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 liis vices and drunkeimess. He is never religions. He lives in rags and wretchedness, and dies in the workhouse or in the gaol.
xxin.
The sad ending of Conspirators.
Nor can there be a spectacle presented by histojy 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 gitted, 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 tlie 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
148 WAR OF ANTICHRIST AVITH THE CHURCH.
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 G-od for the rich man who lived in wealthy splendour, and then died in a great liouse 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 Avant 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 sAveeter 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
THE SAD ENDING OF CONSriRATORS. 149
her wrongs, and wishes to right them. In a fatal hour he meets the tempter. He is sworn into the terrihle 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 Mien 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, con- ferred upon any Catholic Irishman.
150 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
XXIV.
The Triumph of Irish Faith.
The secret society onslaught on the attachment of the people of Ireland to their spiritual guides and to their ancient faith was treacherous, deadly, and long-continued. But, thank heaven ! the Church in Ireland, has survived the shock, terrible though it was. My own Archbishop — at present, happily for Australia, placed by the Holy Father over that extensive portion of the vineyard — a Prelate who knows the Ireland of history better, I would say, than any living mnn, and the Ireland of the pi-esent day, as well, certainly, assured me that nevei' since the days of St. Patrick was the Faith stronger in the country than at the present moment. The frequentation of the sacraaients was at no past period more general — if ever as general. Pious Confraternities spread their blessed influence everywhere. Temperance is progressing. The clergy, numerous and well supported by the people, enlighten all by the purity, self-denial, and laboriousness of theii' lives. They visit their people in every home, no matter how poor, in every cabin, in every garret. They are, as ever, of and with the people. Their little means are freely given to every want of education and religion, and, as far as these means can go, to the poor. This is a condition of things that must continue to bind the priests to the people, and the whole Church of Ireland to God. These holy pastors, whom every tie of nature, affection, and duty, bind to the Irish people, are the guides who have been with them for ages. Numerous, intelligent, learned, patriotic in the highest degree, sons of the saints, they alone can lead God's people aright. They have done so, and sad must be the hour when miserable adventurers, seeking their own gains, can so delude a nation as to seduce them from the side of God's anointed, to what did prove, and must ever prove, if pursued by the Irish people against the loving and intelligent advice of the Irish priests, " a mockery, a delusion, and a snare." The time
THE TRIUMPH OF IRISH FAITH. 151
is come, however, when using their own intelligence Irishmen will everywhere be able to resist the wiles and temptations of the secret society seducer, and think for themselves. The leaders, the fathers who have never deceived them, whose advices are always given for their best advantage, who suffered and died for them in the past, and are ready to do so in the present and in the future, are the clergy of Ireland, led l)y the Bishops of Ireland, and all follownig the infallible teachings of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. God grant that this guidance may never fail ; that the day may never dawn when it will not be heeded ; and that the race of wretched men who have so often in the past ensnared generous-hearted, Catholic Irishmen in Ireland, in Great Britain, in America, and elsewhere, may end for ever. From such false agents and fi-om the machinations of all enemies to Irish Faith, we well may pray, God Save Ireland !
I have no doubt whatever, but this our prayer will be heard. We only want a knowledge of the evil to avoid it. Even from what I have said this evening — and I have only stated plain, unvarnished facts — it must be evident that all secret societies and societies aiming at bad and irreligious ends are no other than deadly Illuminated Freemasonry. Let them be called by whatever name, they are a part of the system of secret revolutionary fraud, invented and cast upon the earth by Satan to compass the ruin of souls, and the destruction of the reign of Jesus Christ. They are of the same kind as the Black Hand in Spain, as the Commune of Paris, as the Nihilism that now dominates in Eussia. With such associations the children of God have only one duty to discharge. It is : so for from giving them any countenance or support, to oppose them by every means possible. I believe their strength has spent its force in Ireland. It only remains that the Irish abroad, who have crossed the seas to find a home, an honest living, and an honourable fortune if they can in this and in other lands, should, as I have just advised, stand on their guard against emissaries who, under pretexts as seductive as those used by
152 WAR OF ANTICHEIST WITH THE CHURCH.
the Fenian leaders to lead our countrymen to ruin, or by that degraded seducer of brave, but heedless and passionate young men, Carey, to drag his victims to murder and the gallows, may come to whisper words of conspiracy and lead fir astray. The Catholic who hears the invitation from any quarter, were it from an angel from heaven, were it from a priest of God — fallen as that angel or priest should be to be al:)le to give it — let him beware. It is a devil that speaks to him as sure as it was a devil that spoke to his mother Eve in the Garden of Eden. Let him renounce that devil and his tools and his works. Let him ask aid from on High — Good Counsel from God through the prayers of God's Virgin Mother, and he will triumph. He will stand firm on the side of G^d, and one day be rewarded at His Eight Hand with the most glorious triumph that can be given to man to witness — the triumph of Christ coming in His Majesty to judge the living and the dead.
All that secret organization of which we have been speaking so much, is being framed by Satan and his emissaries for one end long foreseen — that is, to form, and that before very many years, the vast kingdom of Antichrist, which already spreads its ramifications over the whole earth. It is, you see, determined to leave no people, or nation, or tribe, or tongue, unsubjected to its infiuence. It seeks now the semi-civilized empires of Asia by means of Masonic France, and other European Masonic influences. It plants in Africa the germs of a European domin- ation, which must speedily subject to its authority the dark sons of Ham. I believe, so far as I can judge, it will soon send its telegraphs and its railways careering through that ancient Continent. Placing itself "above all that is worshipped or called God," it will in its pride and hate obliterate the politheism of these countries to make room for its own Atheism; and that which Christianity has been hitherto unable to effect iu destroying the false gods of the heathen, it will effect, in order to plant its own dark non credo instead. It will thus one day be able to call to the standard of whoever is to be its last, long-
THE TRIUMril OF IRISH FAITH. 153
foretold leader, countless millions to battle with the elect of God. It may be — I believe it will be — checked, if but for a few years, to afford time for the Church of Christ to manifest her glory once more, and to gather in her strength for the final combat. But that it will advance to that combat is revealed to us. Children of Ireland what a glorious place is reserved for you when that struggle does come! From the beginning you have been its opponents. When it cried — away with Christ — away with Christ's Vicar — let him be crucified — let his temporal and spiritual power be obliterated — and when, in the nations of Catholic Europe, and of the world, it raised its cries of secularism, of infidel education, of ruin to the Christian family and every Catholic institution, who of all the people of God most withstood it ? Who best, from slender resources, in all the lands where English is spoken, supported the Vicar of Christ and every Catholic principle ? In their island home, during these very saddest days, from the period of the great famine till tliis hour, the Irish people, scattered in their millions over this country and England ; over all the rising nations of great America : and the infant empires growing daily to maturity in Australia and New Zealand, and other islands of the Southern, the Indian, and the Pacific Oceans; by the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel; in the Colonies of Southern Africa ; in the islands of the Caribbean Sea; amidst the decaying Christianity of Buenos Ayres; in Canada : and all the other lands of the earth which give the best promise to Atheistic machinations, the Irish people lifted up the Cross of Christ, and sustained, by the sweat of their brow, the strong, vigorous reality of the Catholic religion. They gave their daughters to the cloister, their sons to the sanctuary, their all to the cause of God. Freemasons thundered and intrigued in the legislatures round about them. Emissaries from the secret sects assailed them in the press, on the platform, everywhere. Fidelity to their religious principles was often visited with political, commercial, and even social ostracism. Eidicule and abuse rained in turn for their fidelity upon them. But the Faith
154 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
of St. Patrick and the hope of God's bright kingdom, the smile and the prayer of Mary in Heaven, were able to defeat and baffle all. In serried ranks with the pastors they had themselves brought forth, and nourished, and educated, and kept, they stood amidst the deluge of deception, allurement, and intrigue about them, firm as their own loved, distant land amidst the billows of the ocean, and went on advancing the mighty work of building up the Church which other nations were pulling down, until their very enemies paused, and wondered, and admired. And often too when these enemies saw in the lands which the Irish had evangelized, the Cross of the Catholic Church arise and pierce the heavens, where it had never been seen before, or had been pro- scribed for generations, they cried out that Catholicity was immortal — was divine ! It comes, for instance, by the Irish into this land, just as it was before the storm banished it, the same as their fathers once saw it. And they say rightly, " so that Church is now and so will it be for ever." Masonic Anti- Christianity will advance and do more damage than ever heresy effected. It will one day sweep the sects of heresy and the temples of idols utterly away; bat it too will have its defeat, and in time must yield to Christ and to His cause the greatest triumph. Its union of all men in one vast republic ; its bringing together of every people and nation ; its destruction of every form of religion to make way for its sect ; its advance in science, in education, in national progress, all Avill serve one day to place the Son of Mary supreme — to realize the prophecy made to His Mother : " And he shall be great, and be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give him the tin-one of David His father, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever, and of His kinsjdom there shall never be an end."
I say that when this consummation comes, as come it surely must, few nations shall have a more glorious record than the people of what is cidled "poor Ireland." Few nations shall have done more to prepare for the final combat, or shall have manifested to a greater extent in Christian heroism the last and most terrible
CATHOLIC ORGANIZATION. 155
trial. No nation whatever shall show a grander roll call of martyrs, confessors, virgins, and sonls saved, than the land and the race evangelized by St. Patrick, whose sacred name already adorns the most glorious and promising churches now existing in the world.
XXV.
Catholic Organization.
In conclusion, it is proper that I should say a word to you upon the attitude of the Church, at the pi'esent moment, in the face of the forces of the Organized Atheism of the world. That organization has now arrived at the perfection of its dark wisdom, and is making rapid strides to the most complete and universal exercise of its power. It has succeeded. Through it the Church is despoiled. The Vicar of Christ is a prisoner, and has been so for over fourteen years. The religious orders are virtually suppressed in nearly every country of Europe. Freemasonry is supreme in the governments of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, and works its will in nearly all the republics of Southern America. It rules Germany, terrifies liussia, distracts Belgium, and secretly gnaws at the heart of Austria. Every- where it advances with rapid strides both in its secret movements against Catholicity and the Christian religion generally^ and in open persecution according to the measure of its opportunity and power. No hope, humanly speaking, appears on the horizon to warrant us at this moment to look for a change for the better. But God has promised never to desert His Church. That promise never can be broken. When the darkest hour comes, it is not for Catholics to look for dissolution, but for life and hope. The crisis in the conflicts of Christianity is the hour of victory. This has been realized more than once since the combat began between Atheistic Masonry and the Church. What hour could be darker than that which saw Pius