I remembered very well the energy shown by M. Allain-Targé, as a Republican Minister of the Interior, at the time of the elections of October 18, 1885. He then issued an official circular instructing all the public functionaries that, while they were to be absolutely 'neutral' as between Republican candidates of different colours, they must exert themselves to the utmost as against all 'reactionary' candidates. I was much interested, therefore, to learn the present opinion of M. Allain-Targé as to the outlook of the Republic under his successor, M. Constans, in 1889. It was very instructive to find that M. Allain-Targé now declines to be a Republican candidate because, to use his own words, though the High Court of Justice may 'deliver the Republic from General Boulanger and his confederates, it is beyond the power of the High Court of Justice to bring France back—let us not say to the heroic age, but to the age of good faith, of disinterestedness, of common sense, and of that prudent, sincere, and loyal policy, thanks to which, during long years, France passed safely through so many serious trials.'
'The new generations of electors,' says M. Allain-Targé in this remarkable letter, 'exact of their representatives conditions to which I will not submit. I will not undertake to make the promises which it is now the fashion of candidates to lavish, and which I cannot regard as serious.' These 'new generations of electors' are the 'new social strata' about which Gambetta used to declaim so confidently only a few years ago, and I quite agreed with my philosophic friend near Chauny in thinking that no slight significance must attach to such a verdict upon them, pronounced in 1889 by an 'advanced Republican' like M. Allain-Targé, who only four years ago, in 1885, was the most active minister of a Government called into existence to carry out the ideas of Gambetta, and to found a stable republic upon these 'new social strata.'
Put into plain English, this letter of M. Allain-Targé, who had more than any of his colleagues to do directly and in the way of business both with the electors and with the elected of France four years ago, and who now declines to have anything more to do with them all—simply means that the electors sell their votes to the highest bidder, and that the man who will make the most unscrupulous bid is likeliest to get the votes. It is hard to see much difference between such a verdict and the outspoken declaration of M. Paul de Cassagnac that law, order, property, and liberty in France are threatened to-day, not by a 'democracy,' but by a 'voyoucratie' or 'blackguardocracy.'
The 'anti-clerical' agitation here, as elsewhere in France, I am assured, is plainly under the control of the 'freemasons.' Not that the 'freemasons' are avowedly very numerous here. But they are influential because they act together, in silence, and on lines common to the agitation all over France. 'Three or four energetic members of the order,' said one very intelligent man to me here at Chauny, 'can easily manage the whole official machinery of a large political district. To understand their methods and their organisation you must go back to the worship of Baphomet in the Middle Ages. In some of their lodges they reproduce with a goat one at least of the abominations which Von Hammer tells us were charged upon the Knights Templars as Baphometic. They are a sect—a persecuting sect, and a sect bent on absolutely destroying the Christian religion. To this end they parody the Christian symbols and the Christian scheme of charity and of good works. They do not, most of them, hold office, it being much more to the purpose for them to awe the officials, and that is their favourite way of working. There are, however, exceptions to this. If you go to Marmande in the South you will find a sub-prefect there who is a most energetic and mischievous "freemason." In the Aisne the Prefect is a freemason, and here all the public functionaries go in fear of the order. They own the newspaper, control profitable contracts of all sorts, and can make or mar the career of public servants, through their occult relations with people at headquarters in Paris.'
I suggested that in England and Germany and the United States the 'freemasons' are not only regarded as friends of order and of law, but number among their dignitaries men of the highest official and personal rank.
'That is quite true, no doubt,' he said. 'But this order in France has, I believe, no official relations now with the order in either of these countries. Its affiliations are with the "freemasons" of Italy, of Belgium, and of Spain, so far as it has any affiliations. There have been "freemasons," as you must know, among the Radical leaders in Belgium who have not hesitated, while holding high public positions, to denounce Christianity in open meetings as a "corpse blocking the way of modern progress"; and what the freemasonry of Italy and of Spain is I am sure you must know.'
I told him that in Spanish America and in Brazil I had met priests who were members of the order; and I particularly cited the case of an ecclesiastic of considerable importance, who in Costa Rica, some ten or twelve years ago, was at the head of the Order of Freemasons in that country.
'That may be,' he replied, 'but officers of our expedition into Mexico under Maximilian have told me that the freemasons in Mexico were active allies of the Liberals and of Juarez in their war against the Church.'
This I could not contradict, for while I never heard that President Juarez was himself a 'freemason,' I know, from my conversations with him after the fall of the Empire, in 1871, that, though educated by the priests in Oajaca, as Robespierre was by the priests in Arras, he was an unbeliever of the type of the advanced Encyclopædists of the last century, and though not such a fanatic as Condorcet, strongly disposed, not only to deprive the Mexican clergy of their 'fueros' under the old Spanish system, but to make an end of Catholicism in Mexico if possible. Nor was he much more friendly to the Protestants, who were then trying, under Bishop Riley, to found a Protestant propaganda in Mexico.
'In France, at all events under the Third Republic,' he went on, 'the "freemasons" are the implacable enemies of religion. It was in full accord with them, and as a battle-cry in their interest, that Gambetta uttered his famous declaration that "Clericalism is the enemy!" And if the "freemasons" of any other country recognise and in any fashion affiliate with the Grand Orient of France, they ought to understand what they are doing, and to what objects they are lending themselves, consciously or unconsciously. You tell me that General Washington was a freemason. Yes, no doubt, but the freemasonry which he accepted was no more like the modern "freemasonry" of France than this Third Republic of ours is like the republic of which he was the founder!'