lidarity of
men, on the benefits of instruction, and on the "correction of the
system of governments and of legislations" views very superior to
those of "The Essay on Despotism" (1772). The mind of Mirabeau had
ripened. The duties he traces out for the "brothers of the higher
grade" constitute even a whole plan of reforms which resemble very
much in certain parts the work accomplished later by the
Constituent [Assembly]: suppression of servitudes on the land and
the rights of main morte, abolition of the corvees, of working
guilds and of maitrises [freedom of companies], of customs and
excise duties, the diminution of taxation, liberty of religious
opinions and of the press, the disappearance of special
jurisdiction. In order to organize, to develop and arrive at his
end, Mirabeau invokes the example of the Jesuits: "We have quite
contrary views," he says, "that of enlightening men, of making them
free and happy, but we must and we can do this by the same means,
and who should prevent us doing for good what the Jesuits have done
for evil?"[512]

Now in this Memoir Mirabeau makes no mention of Weishaupt, but in his
_Histoire de la Monarchic Prussienne_ he gives a eulogistic account of
the Bavarian Illuminati, referring to Weishaupt by name, and showing the
Order to have arisen out of Freemasonry. It will be seen that this
account corresponds point by point with the Memoir he had himself made
out in 1776, that is to say, in the very year that Illuminism was
founded:

The Lodge Theodore de Bon Conseil at Munich, where there were a few
men with brains and hearts, was tired of being tossed about by the
vain promises and quarrels of Masonry. The heads resolved to graft
on to their branch another secret association to which they gave
the name of the Order of the Illumines. They modelled it on the
Society of Jesus, whilst proposing to themselves views
diametrically opposed.

Mirabeau then goes on to say that the great object of the Order was the
amelioration of the present system of government and legislation, that
one of its fundamental rules was to admit "no prince whatever his
virtues,"[513] that it proposed to abolish--

The slavery of the peasants, the servitude of men to the soil, the
rights of main morte and all the customs and privileges which abase
humanity, the corvees under the