Chapter XV: Letter of Piccolo Tigre, &c

“In the impossibility in which our brothers and friends find themselves, to say, as yet, their last word, it has been judged good and useful to propagate the light everywhere, and to set in motion all that which aspires to move. For this reason we do not cease to recommend to you, to affiliate persons of every class to every manner of association, no matter of what kind, _only provided that mystery and secrecy should be the dominant characteristics_. All Italy is covered with religious confraternities, and with penitents of divers colours. Do not fear to slip in some of your people into the very midst of these flocks, led as they are by a stupid devotion. Let our agents study with care the _personnel_ of these confraternity men, and they will see that little by little, they will not be wanting in a harvest. Under a pretext the most futile, but never political or religious, create by yourselves, or, better yet, cause to be created by others, associations, having commerce, industry, music, the fine arts, etc., for object.[13] Reunite in one place or another,—in the sacristies or chapels even,—these tribes of yours as yet ignorant: put them under the pastoral staff of some virtuous priest, well known, but credulous and easy to be deceived. Then infiltrate the poison into those chosen hearts; infiltrate it in little doses, and, as if by chance. Afterwards, upon reflection, you will yourselves be astonished at your success.

“The essential thing is to isolate a man from his family, to cause him to lose his morals. He is sufficiently disposed by the bent of his character to flee from household cares, and to run after easy pleasures and forbidden joys. He loves the long conversations of the _café_ and the idleness of shows. Lead him along, sustain him, give him an importance of some kind or other; discreetly teach him to grow weary of his daily labours, and by this management, after having separated him from his wife and from his children, and after having shown him how painful are all his duties, you will then excite in him the desire of another existence. Man is a born rebel. Stir up the desire of rebellion until it becomes a conflagration, but in such a manner that the conflagration may not break out. This is a preparation for the grand work that you should commence. When you shall have insinuated into a few souls disgust for family and for religion (the one nearly always follows in the wake of the other), let fall some words from you, which will provoke the desire of being affiliated to the nearest lodge. That vanity of the citizen or the burgess, to be enfeodated to Freemasonry, is something so common and so universal that it always makes me wonder at human stupidity. I begin to be astonished at not seeing the entire world knock at the gates of all the Venerables, and demand from these gentlemen the honour to be one of the workmen chosen for the reconstruction of the temple of Solomon. The prestige of the unknown exercises upon men a certain kind of power, that they prepare themselves with trembling for the phantasmagoric trials of the initiation and of the fraternal banquet.

“To find oneself a member of a lodge, to feel oneself called upon to guard from wife and children, a secret which is never confided to you, is for certain natures a pleasure and an ambition. The lodges, to-day, can well create gourmands, they will never bring forth citizens. There is too much dining amongst the right worshipful and right reverend brethren of all the Ancients. But they form a place of depot, a kind of stud (breeding ground), a centre through which it is necessary to pass before coming to us. The lodges form but a relative evil, an evil tempered by a false philanthropy, and by songs yet more false as in France. All that is too pastoral and too gastronomic; but it is an object which it is necessary to encourage without ceasing. In teaching a man to raise his glass to his lips you become possessed of his intelligence and of his liberty, you dispose of him, turn him round about, and study him. You divine his inclinations, his affections, and his tendencies; then, when he is ripe for us, we direct him to the secret society of which Freemasonry can be no more than the antechamber.

“The _Alta Vendita_ desires, that under one pretence or another, as many princes and wealthy persons as possible should be introduced into the Masonic lodges. Princes of a sovereign house, and those who have not the legitimate hope of being kings by the grace of God, all wish to be kings by the grace of a Revolution. The Duke of Orleans is a Freemason, the Prince of Carignan was one also. There are not wanting in Italy and elsewhere, those amongst them, who aspire to the modest-enough honours of the symbolic apron and trowel. Others of them are disinherited and proscribed. Flatter all of their number who are ambitious of popularity; monopolize them for Freemasonry. The _Alta Vendita_ will afterwards see what it can do to utilize them in the cause of progress. A prince who has not a kingdom to expect, is a good fortune for us. There are many of them in that plight. Make Freemasons of them. The lodge will conduct them to Carbonarism. A day will come, perhaps, when the _Alta Vendita_ will deign to affiliate them. While awaiting they will serve as birdlime for the imbeciles, the intriguing, the _bourgeoisie_, and the needy. These poor princes will serve our ends, while thinking to labour only for their own. They form a magnificent sign board, and there are always fools enough to be found, who are ready to compromise themselves in the service of a conspiracy, of which some prince or other seems to be the ringleader.

“Once that a man, that a prince, that a prince especially, shall have commenced to grow corrupt, be persuaded that he will hardly rest upon the declivity. There is little morality even amongst the most moral of the world, and one goes fast in the way of that progress. Do not then be dismayed to see the lodges flourish, while Carbonarism recruits itself with difficulty. It is upon the lodges that we count to double our ranks. They form, without knowing it, our preparatory novitiate. They discourse without end upon the dangers of fanaticism, upon the happiness of social equality, and upon the grand principles of religious liberty. They launch amidst their feastings thundering anathemas against intolerance and persecution. This is positively more than we require to make adepts. A man imbued with these fine things is not very far from us. There is nothing more required than to enlist him. The law of social progress is there, and all there. You need not take the trouble to seek it elsewhere. In the present circumstances never lift the mask. Content yourselves to prowl about the Catholic sheepfold, but as good wolves seize in the passage the first lamb who offers himself in the desired conditions. The burgess has much of that which is good for us, the prince still more. For all that, these lambs must not be permitted to turn themselves into foxes like the infamous Carignan. The betrayal of the oath is a sentence of death; and all those princes whether they are weak or cowardly, ambitious or repentant, betray us, or denounce us. As good fortune would have it, they know little, in fact not anything, and they cannot come upon the trace of our true mysteries.

“Upon the occasion of my last journey to France, I saw with profound satisfaction, that our young initiated exhibited an extreme ardour for the diffusion of Carbonarism; but I also found that they rather precipitated the movement a little. As I think, they converted their religious hatred too much into a political hatred. The conspiracy against the Roman See, should not confound itself with other projects. We are exposed to see germinate in the bosom of secret societies, ardent ambitions; and the ambitious, once masters of power, may abandon us. The route which we follow is not as yet sufficiently well traced so as to deliver us up to intriguers and tribunes. It is of absolute necessity to de-Catholicise the world. And an ambitious man, having arrived at his end, will guard himself well from seconding us. The Revolution in the Church is the Revolution _en permanence_. It is the necessary overthrowing of thrones and dynasties. Now an ambitious man cannot really wish these things. We see higher and farther. Endeavour therefore to act for us, and to strengthen us. Let us not conspire except against Rome. For that, let us serve ourselves with all kinds of incidents; let us put to profit every kind of eventuality. Let us be principally on our guard against the exaggerations of zeal. A good hatred, thoroughly cold, thoroughly calculated, thoroughly profound, is of more worth than all these artificial fires and all these declamations of the platform. At Paris they cannot comprehend this, but in London I have seen men who seized better upon our plan, and who associated themselves to us with more fruit. Considerable offers have been made to me. Presently we shall have a printing establishment at Malta placed at our disposal. We shall then be able with impunity, with a sure stroke, and under the British flag, to scatter from one end of Italy to the other, books, pamphlets, etc., which the _Alta Vendita_ shall judge proper to put in circulation.”

This document was issued in 1822. Since then, the instructions it gives have been constantly acted upon in the lodges of Carbonarism, not only in Italy but everywhere else. “Prowl about the Catholic sheepfold and seize the first lamb that presents himself in the required conditions.” This, and the order to get into Catholic confraternities, were as well executed by the infamous Carey under the influence of “No. One,” as they were by any Italian conspirator and assassin, under the personal inspiration of _Piccolo Tigre_. Carey, the loud-spoken Catholic—the Catholic who had Freemason or Orange friends able to assist him in the truly Masonic way of getting members of the craft as Town-Councillors, or Aldermen, or Members of Parliament—was, we now know, a true secret-society hypocrite of the genuine Italian type. He prowled with effect round the Catholic sheepfold. He joined “with fruit” the confraternities of the Church. Well may we pray that God may guard from such satanic influences the noble, generous-hearted, faithful young men of Ireland at home and in all the lands of their vast colonization. The scoundrel that presents the “knife” or the “prayer-book” ready to swear them in, is a murderer in intention, and in effect whenever he dares to be, with a chance of impunity. He is ready to drag them in the toils of the Carbonari, for whether a secret society be Irish, English, or American; whether Fenian or Invincible, no matter by what name it may be called, it is still black Masonry—Carbonarism pure and simple. And the lost hypocrite and assassin who tempts incautious youth, under the pretence of patriotism, to join any such society, is ever, like Carey, as ready to betray as he is to “swear in” his victim.

Another curious instruction given by the _Alta Vendita_ to the Carbonari of the lower lodges, is the way to catch a priest and make the good, simple man, unconsciously aid the designs of the revolutionary sectaries. In the permanent instruction of the _Alta Vendita_, given to all the lodges, you will recollect the passage I read for you relative to the giving of bad names to faithful Prelates who may be too knowing or too good to do the work of the Carbonari against conscience, God, and the souls of men. “Ably find out the words and the ways to make them unpopular” is the sum of that advice. Has it not been attempted amongst ourselves? But the main advice of the permanent instruction is to seduce the clergy. The ecclesiastic to be deceived is to be led on by patriotic ardour. He is to be blinded by a constant, though, of course, false, and fatal popularity. He is to be made believe that his course, so very pleasant to flesh and blood, is not only the most patriotic but the best for religion. “A free Church in a free State,” was the cry with which the sectaries pulled down the altars, banished the religious, seized upon Church property, robbed the Pope, and despoiled the Propaganda. There were ecclesiastics so far deceived, at one time, as to be led away by these cries in Italy, and ecclesiastics have been deceived, if not by these, at least by cries as false and fatal elsewhere to our knowledge. The seduction of foremost ecclesiastics, prelates, and bishops, was the general policy of the sect at all times, and it remains so everywhere to this day.

The rank and file of the Carbonari had to do with local priests and local men of influence. These were, if possible, to be corrupted, unnerved, and seduced. There was a method for that, “the corruption of the clergy by ourselves” devised. Each Carbonaro was moreover ordered to try and corrupt a fellow Christian, a man of family, by means that the devil himself incarnate could not devise better for the purpose.

At the end of his letter, _Piccolo Tigre_ glances at means of corruption which he hoped then—and his hopes were soon realized to the full—to have in operation for the scattering of Masonic “light” throughout Italy. We have another document which will enable us to judge of the nature of this “light.” It is contained in a letter from _Vindex_ to _Nubius_, and was meant to cause the ideas of the _Alta Vendita_ to pass through the lodges. It is found in that convenient form of questioning which the Sultan propounds to the Chiek-ul-Islam when he wants to make war. He puts his reasons in a set of questions, and the Chiek replies in as many answers. Then the war is right in the sight of Allah, and so all Islam go to fight in a war so sanctified. The new Islam does the same. A skilfully devised set of questions are posed for the consideration of one member of the _Alta Vendita_ by another, and the answer which has been well concocted in secret conclave, is of course either given or implied to be given by the nature of the case. The horrible quality of the diabolical measures proposed by Vindex to Nubius in this form for the desired destruction of the Church, cannot be surpassed. If he discountenances assassination, it is not from fear or loathing of that frightful crime, but simply because it is not the best policy. He certainly did fall in upon the only blow that could—if that were possible, which, thank God, it is not—destroy the Church of God, and place, as he well says, Catholicity in the tomb. This a translation of the document:—

“CASTELLAMARE, _9th August, 1838_.

“The murders of which our people render themselves culpable
now in France, now in Switzerland, and always in Italy, are
for us a shame and a remorse. It is the cradle of the world,
illustrated by the epilogue of Cain and Abel, and we are
too far in progress to content ourselves with such means.
To what purpose does it serve to kill a man? To strike fear
into the timid and to keep audacious hearts far from us? Our
predecessors in Carbonarism did not understand their power. It
is not in the blood of an isolated man, or even of a traitor,
that it is necessary to exercise it; it is upon the masses. Let
us not individualize crime. In order to grow great, even to the
proportions of patriotism and of hatred for the Church, it is
necessary to generalize it. A stroke of the dagger signifies
nothing, produces nothing. What does the world care for a few
unknown corpses cast upon the highway by the vengeance of
secret societies? What matters it to the world, if the blood of
a workman, of an artist, of a gentleman, or even of a prince,
has flown in virtue of a sentence of Mazzini, or certain of
his cut-throats playing seriously at the _Holy Vehme_. The
world has not time to lend an ear to the last cries of the
victim. It passes on and forgets; it is we, my Nubius, we
alone, that can suspend its march. Catholicism has no more fear
of a well-sharpened stiletto than monarchies have, but these
two bases of social order can fall by corruption. Let us then
never cease to corrupt. Tertullian was right in saying, that
the blood of martyrs was the seed of Christians. It is decided
in our councils, and we do not desire any more Christians. Let
us, then, not make martyrs, but let us popularise vice amongst
the multitudes. Let us cause them to draw it in by their five
senses; to drink it in; to be saturated with it; and that land
which Aretinus has sown is always disposed to receive lewd
teachings. Make vicious hearts, and you will have no more
Catholics. Keep the priest away from labour, from the altar,
from virtue. Seek adroitly to otherwise occupy his thoughts and
his hours. Make him lazy, a gourmand, and a patriot. He will
become ambitious, intriguing, and perverse. You will thus have
a thousand times better accomplished your task, than if you
had blunted the point of your stiletto upon the bones of some
poor wretches. I do not wish, nor do you any more, my friend
Nubius, is it not so? to devote my life to conspiracies, in
order to be dragged along in the old ruts.

“It is corruption _en masse_ that we have undertaken; the
corruption of the people by the clergy, and the corruption of
the clergy by ourselves; the corruption which ought, one day,
to enable us to put the Church in her tomb. I have recently
heard one of our friends, laughing in a philosophic manner at
our projects, say to us: ‘in order to destroy Catholicism it is
necessary to commence by suppressing woman.’ The words are true
in a sense; but since we cannot suppress woman, let us corrupt
her with the Church, _corruptio optimi pessima_. The object
we have in view is sufficiently good to tempt men such as we
are; let us not separate ourselves from it for some miserable
personal satisfaction of vengeance. The best poniard with which
to strike the Church is corruption. To the work then, even to
the very end.”

The horrible programme of impurity here proposed was at once adopted. It was after all but an attempt more determined than ever, to spread the immorality of which Voltaire and his school were the apostles. At the time the _Alta Vendita_ propounded this infernal plan they were resisting an inroad upon their authority on the part of Joseph Mazzini, just then coming into notoriety, who, however, overcame them.

Mazzini developed and taught, in his grandiloquent style, as well as practised the doctrine of assassination[14] which formed, we know, a part of the system of all secret societies, and which the _Alta Vendita_ deprecated because they feared that it was about being employed, just then, against the members of their own body. Mazzini speaks of having arisen from his bed one morning fully satisfied as to the lawfulness of removing whomsoever he might be pleased to consider an enemy, by the dagger, and fully determined to put that horrible principle into execution. He cherished it as the simplest means given to an oppressed people to free themselves from tyrants. But however much he laboured to make his terrible creed plausible, as being only permissible against tyrants and traitors, it was readily foreseen how easily it could be extended, until it became a capital danger for the sectaries themselves. Human nature could never become so base and so blinded as not to revolt against a principle so pernicious. It may last for a season amidst the first pioneers of the _Alta Vendita_, amongst the Black Hand in Spain, amongst the Nihilists in Russia, amongst the Invincibles in Ireland, amongst the Trade-Unionists of the Bradlaugh stamp in England, or amongst the Communists of Paris. It may serve as a means to hold in terror the unfortunate prince or leader who may be seduced in youth or manhood to join secret societies from motives of ambition; and when that ambition was gratified, might refuse to go the lengths for Socialism which the _Alta Vendita_ required. But otherwise assassination did not by experience prove such a sovereign power in the hands of the Carbonari as Mazzini expected. His more astute associates soon found out this; and, not from any qualms of conscience, but from a strong sense of its inexpediency for their ends, they determined to reject it. They found out a more effective, though a far more infamous, way for attaining the dark mastery of the world. It was by the assassination not of bodies but of souls—by the deliberate systemization and persevering diffusion of immorality.[15]

The _Alta Vendita_, then, sat down calmly to consider the best means to accomplish this design. Satan and his fallen angels could devise no more efficacious methods than they found out. They resolved to spread impurity by every method used in the past by demons to tempt men to sin, to make the practice of sin habitual, and to keep the unhappy victim in the state of sin to the end. They had, being living men, means to accomplish this purpose, which devils could not use without the aid of men. Christian civilization established upon the ruins of the licentiousness of Paganism had kept European society pure. Vice, when it did appear, had to hide its head for shame. Public decency, supported by public opinion, kept it down. So long as morality existed as a recognized virtue, the Revolution had no chance of permanent success; and so the men of the _Alta Vendita_ resolved to bring back the world to a state of brutal licentiousness not only as bad as that of Paganism, but to a state at which even the morality of the Pagans would shudder. To do this they proceeded with caution. Their first attempt was to cause vice to lose its conventional horror, and to make it free from civil punishment. The unfortunate class of human beings who make a sad trade in sin, were to be taken under the protection of the law, and to be kept free from disease at the expense of the State. Houses were to be licensed, inspected, protected, and given over to their purposes. The dishonour attached to their infamous condition was, so far as the law could effect it, to be taken away. That wholesome sense of danger and fear of disease which averted the criminally disposed from sin was to disappear. The agents of the _Alta Vendita_ had instructions to increase the number and the seductiveness of those unfortunate beings, while the State, when revolutionized, was to close its eyes to their excesses, and to connive at their attempts upon the youth of the country. They were to be planted close to great schools and universities, and wherever else they could ruin the rising generation in every country in which the sect should obtain power.

Then literature was systematically rendered as immoral as possible, and diffused with a perseverance and labour worthy of a better cause. Railway stations, newspaper stands, book shops, and restaurants, were made to teem with infamous productions, while the same were scattered broadcast to the people over every land.

The teaching of the Universities and of all the middle schools of the State, was not only to be rendered Atheistic and hostile to religion, but was actually framed to demoralize the unfortunate alumni at a season of life always but too prone to vice.

Finally, besides the freest licence for blasphemy and immorality, and the exhibition and diffusion of immoral pictures, paintings, and statuary, a last attempt was to be made upon the virtue of young females under the guise of educating them up to the standard of human progress.

Therefore, middle and high-class schools were, regardless of expense, to be provided for female children, who should be, at any cost, taken far away from the protecting care of nuns. They were to be taught in schools directed by lay masters, and always exposed to such influences as would sap, if not destroy, their purity, and, as a sure consequence, their faith. These schools have since been the order of the day with Masonry all over the world. “If we cannot suppress woman let us corrupt her with the Church,” said Vindex, and they have faithfully acted upon this advice.

The terrible society which planned these infernal means for destroying religion, social order, and the souls of men, continued its operations for many years. Its “permanent instruction” became the Gospel of all the secret societies of Europe. Its agents, like _Piccolo Tigre_, travelled unceasingly in every country. Its orders were received, according to the system of Masonry, by the heads and the rank and file of the lodges as so many inevitable decrees. But fortunately for the world, it permitted too much political action to the second lines of the great conspiracy. In the latter, ambitious spirits arose, who, while embracing to the full the doctrines of Voltaire and the principles of Weishaupt, began to think that the _Alta Vendita_ stayed actual revolution too much. This state of feeling became general when that high lodge refused admittance to Mazzini, who wished to become one of the invisible forty—the number beyond which the supreme governing body never permitted itself to pass.

The jealousy of _Nubius_—for jealousy is a quality of demons not wanting from the highest intelligences in Atheistic organization to the lowest—prevented his being admitted. But he was already far too powerful with the rank and file of the Carbonari to be refused a voice in the supreme management. He raised a cry against the old chiefs as being impotent and needing change. _Nubius_ consequently passed mysteriously away. M. Cretineau Joly[16] is clearly of opinion that it was by poison; and as it was a custom with the unfortunate chief to betray for his own protection, or for punishment, some lodges of Carbonari to the Pontifical Government, it is more than probable that it was by his provision or information that the same Government came into the possession of the whole archives of the _Alta Vendita_, and that the Church and society have the documents which I have quoted and others still more valuable to guide them in discovering and defeating the attempts of organized Atheism.

The _Alta Vendita_ subsequently passed to Paris, and since it is believed to Berlin. It was the immediate successor of the Inner Circle of Weishaupt. It may change in the number of its adepts and in the places of its meetings, but it always subsists. There is over it, a recognized Chief like Nubius or Weishaupt. But in his lifetime this Chief is usually unknown, at least to the world outside “Illuminated” Masonry. He is unknown to the rank and file of the common lodges. But he wields a power which, however, is not, as in the case of _Nubius_ and Mazzini, always undisputed. Since that time, if not before it, there have been two parties under its Directory, each having its own duties, well defined. These are