However, all these machinations might have come to naught had it not been for the encouragement and direction supplied by the Illuminati. In the latter Barruel saw the apotheosis of infamy and corruption.[578] With diabolical ingenuity the chiefs of the Illuminati succeeded in evolving an organization which put into the hands of the conspirators, i. e., the philosophers and Freemasons, the very instrument they needed to give full effect to their plans. The superiority of that organization was to be seen in its principles of general subordination and the gradation of superiors, in the minute instructions given to adepts and officers covering every conceivable responsibility and suggesting infinite opportunities to promote the order’s welfare, and in the absolute power of its general.[579] Thus was built up a hierarchy of savants, an association held under a most rigid discipline, a formidable machine capable of employing its maximum power as its governing hand might direct.[580] With the close of the third volume Barruel considers that he has been able to present a “complete academy of Conspirators.”[581]
Barruel’s last volume, the most formidable of all, was devoted by its author to the forging of the final link in his chain: the coalescence of the conspiring philosophers, Freemasons, and Illuminati into the Jacobins. To establish a connection between the “illuminated” Masons and the immediate “authors and abettors of the French Revolution,”[582] i. e., the Jacobins, Barruel had recourse to the familiar inventions of the reappearance of the Bavarian Illuminati after its suppression,[583] the rise and corrupting influence of the German Union,[584] that treacherous “modification of Weishaupt’s Minerval schools,”[585] and, particularly, the pretended mission of Bode and von Busche to Paris.[586]
With respect to this last invention, no more worthy of our comment than the others except for the fact that it was supposed to supply the direct point of contact between the conspirators and the French Revolution, Barruel was obliged to admit that he was unable to place before his readers evidence of the precise character of the negotiations that took place between the deputation from Berlin and the French lodges:[587] “facts” would have to be permitted to speak for themselves.[588] These “facts” were such as the following: the lodges of Paris were rapidly converted into clubs, with regulating committees and political committees;[589] the resolutions of the regulating committees were communicated through the committee of correspondence of the Grand Orient to the heads of the Masonic lodges scattered throughout France;[590] the day of general insurrection was thus fixed for July 14, 1789;[591] on the fatal day the lodges were dissolved, and the Jacobins, suddenly throwing off their garments of secrecy and hypocrisy, stood forth in the clear light of day.[592]
His last two hundred pages were devoted by Barruel to arguments shaped chiefly to show that the principles of the Revolutionary leaders were identical with the principles of the illuminated lodges;[593] that the successes of the Revolutionary armies, of Custine beyond the Rhine,[594] of Dumouriez in Belgium,[595] of Pichegru in Holland,[596] and of Bonaparte in Italy, in Malta, and in Egypt,[597] were explicable only on the ground of treacherous intrigues carried on by the agents of Illuminism; and that no country, moreover, need flatter itself it would escape the seductions and plots of the conspirators. The dragon’s teeth of revolution were already sown in Switzerland, in Sweden, in Russia, in Poland, in Austria, in Prussia, and in America.[598] With Barruel’s comment upon America,[599] our discussion of the Memoirs of Jacobinism may well come to a close.
As the plague flies on the wings of the wind, so do their triumphant legions infect America. Their apostles have infused their principles into the submissive and laborious negroes; and St. Domingo and Guadaloupe have been converted into vast charnel houses for their inhabitants. So numerous were the brethren in North America, that Philadelphia and Boston trembled, lest their rising constitution should be obliged to make way for that of the great club; and if for a time the brotherhood has been obliged to shrink back into their hiding places, they are still sufficiently numerous to raise collections and transmit them to the insurgents of Ireland;[600] thus contributing toward that species of revolution which is the object of their ardent wishes in America.[601] God grant that the United States may not learn to their cost, that Republics are equally menaced with Monarchies; and that the immensity of the ocean is but a feeble barrier against the universal conspiracy of the Sect!
NOTE: The literary relationship between the works of Robison and Barruel is of sufficient interest and significance to warrant some comment. Robison’s volume was published before its author saw Barruel’s composition in its French text.[602] Later, Robison was moved to rejoice that Barruel had confirmed his main positions and contentions. A few things in the Memoirs of Jacobinism, however, impress him as startling. He confesses that he had never before heard the claim seriously made that “irreligion and unqualified Liberty and Equality are the genuine and original Secrets of Free Masonry, and the ultimatum of a regular progress through all its degrees.”[603] He is driven to assert that this is not the secret of Masonry as he has learned it from other sources. Robison also recognizes differences in the two works respecting the exposition of certain Masonic degrees. For his part he is not willing to admit that his sources are unreliable.[604]
Barruel, on the other hand, did not get sight of Robison’s volume until just as his third volume was going to press.[605] He comments in part as follows: “Without knowing it, we have fought for the same cause with the same arms, and pursued the same course; but the Public are on the eve of seeing our respective quotations, and will observe a remarkable difference between them.”[606] That difference Barruel attempts to explain on the ground that Robison had adopted the method of combining and condensing his quotations from his sources. Besides, he thinks his zealous confederate “in some passages … has even adopted as truth certain assertions which the correspondence of the Illuminées evidently demonstrate to have been invented by them against their adversaries, and which,” he continues, “in my Historical Volume I shall be obliged to treat in an opposite sense.”[607] Barruel also differs with Robison respecting the time of the origin of Masonry.[608] But all such matters are of slight consequence; all suggestions of opposition and disagreement between Robison and Barruel are brushed aside by him in the following summary fashion: “ … It will be perceived that we are not to be put in competition with each other; Mr. Robison taking a general view while I have attempted to descend into particulars: as to the substance we agree.”[609]
It was one of the most confident boasts of the supporters of the idea of a “conspiracy against thrones and altars” that these two writers, Robison and Barruel, had worked at the same problem without the knowledge of each other’s effort, and thus following independent lines of investigation, had reached the same conclusion. The merit of the claim may safely be left to the reader’s judgment.