Letter of Piccolo Tigre

"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 diverse colors. 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. 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 cafe 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 labors, 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 which will provoke the desire of being affiliated to the nearest lodge. That vanity of the citizen or the burgess, to belong 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 honor 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 right worshipful and right reverend brethren of all the Ancients. But they form a place of depot, a kind of stud (breeding ground), a center 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 pretense 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 honors 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 labor 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 ardor 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-Catholicize 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. Endeavor, 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. 1," 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 Councilors, 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 sheep-fold. He joined "with fruit" the confraternities of the Church.

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. Each Carbonaro was 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.

[Footnote 1: Mazzini, after exhorting his followers to attract as many of the higher classes as possible to the secret plotting, which has resulted in united Italy, and is meant to result in republican Italy as a prelude to republican Europe, says—

"Associate, associate. All is contained in that word. The secret societies can give an irresistible force to the party who are able to invoke them. Do not fear to see them divided. The more they are divided the better it will be. All of them advance to the same end by different paths. The secret will be often unveiled. So much the better. The secret is necessary to give security to members, but a certain transparency is necessary to strike fear into those wishing to remain stationary. When a great number of associates who receive the word of command to scatter an idea abroad and make it public opinion, can concert even for a moment they will find the old edifice pierced in all its parts, and falling, as if by a miracle, at the least breath of progress. They will themselves be astonished to see kings, lords, men of capital, priests, and all those who form the carcass of the old social edifice, fly before the sole power of public opinion. Courage, then, and perseverance."]

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 Sheik-ul-Islam when he wants to make war. He puts his reasons in a set of questions, and the Sheik 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 skillfully 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, Catholicism in the tomb. This is 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. Let us, then, not make martyrs, but let us popularize 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 labor, 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 bonesofsome poor wretches. I do not wish, nor do you any more, my friend Nubius, 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 (corruption of the best is the worst). 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 work, then, even to the very end."

The horrible program 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 practiced the doctrine of assassination 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 to be 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 labored 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 deliberate, systematic and persevering diffusion of immorality.

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 dishonor 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 labor 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 license 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 unfortunately 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 halted 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 intelligence 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 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. The Church and society now 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.

[Footnote 2: The following extracts from the rules of the Carbonari of Italy, "Young Italy," will give an idea of the spirit and intent of the order as improved by the warlike and organizing genius of Mazzini:—

ART. I.—The society is formed for the indispensable destruction of all the Governments of the Peninsula and to form of Italy one sole State under a Republican Government.

ART. II.—Having experienced the horrible evils of absolute power and those yet greater of constitutional monarchies, we ought to work to found a Republic one and indivisible.

ART. XXX.—Those who do not obey the orders of the secret society, or who shall reveal its mysteries, shall be poniarded without remission. The same chastisement for traitors.

ART. XXXI.—The secret tribunal shall pronounce the sentence and shall design one or two affiliated members for its immediate execution.

ART. XXXII.—Whoever shall refuse to execute the sentence shall be considered a perjurer, and as such shall be killed on the spot.

ART. XXXIII.—If the culpable individual escape he shall be pursued without intermission in every place, and he ought to be struck by an invisible hand, even should he take refuge in the bosom of his mother or in the tabernacles of Christ.

ART. XXXIV.—Every secret tribunal shall be competent not only to judge the culpable adepts, but also to cause to be put to death every person whom it shall have stricken with anathema.

ART. XXXIX.—The officers shall carry a dagger of antique form, the sub-officers and soldiers shall have guns, and bayonets, together with a poniard a foot long attached to their cincture, and upon which they will take oath, etc.

A large number of inspectors of police, generals, and statesmen, were assassinated by order of these tribunals. The lodges assisted in that work. Eckert says, La Franc-Maconnerie, t. ii., p. 218, 219—

"Mazzini was the head of that Young Europe and of the warlike power of Freemasonry, and we find in the Latomia that the minister Nothorub, who had retired from it, said to M. Vesbugem, even in the national palace in the presence of six deputies, that Freemasonry at the present time in Belgium had become a powerful and dangerous arm in the hands of certain men, that the Swiss insurrection had its resting place in the machinations of the Belgian lodges, and that Brother Defacqz, Grand Master of these lodges, had undertaken, in 1844, a voyage to Switzerland, only in order to prepare that agitation."]

[Footnote 3: Nubius, who, in conjunction with the Templars of France, and the secret friends of the Revolution in England, had caused all the troubles endured by the Church and the Holy Father during the celebrated Congress of Rome and during the entire reign of Louis Philippe, and had so ably planned the revolutions afterwards carried out by Palmerston and Napoleon III., was written to before his death by one of his fellow-conspirators in the following strain:—"We have pushed most things to extremes. We have taken away from the people all the gods of heaven and earth that they had in homage. We have taken away their religious faith, their monarchical faith, their virtue, their probity, their family virtue; and, meantime, what do we hear in the distance but low bellowing; we tremble, for the monster may devour us. We have little by little deprived the people of all honorable sentiment. They will be without pity. The more I think on it the more I am convinced that we must seek delay of payment." ]