, and the government of the nations was to be directed
by their nocturnal clubs.

This is what has been done and is still being done. But we notice
that princes and people are unaware how and by what means this is
being accomplished. That is why we say to them in all frankness:
The misuse of our Order, the misunderstanding of our secret, has
produced all the political and moral troubles with which the world
is filled to-day. You who have been initiated, you must join
yourselves with us in raising your voices, so as to teach peoples
and princes that the sectarians, the apostates of our Order, have
alone been and will be the authors of present and future
revolutions. We must assure princes and peoples, on our honour and
our duty, that our association is in no way guilty of these evils.
But in order that our attestations should have force and merit
belief, we must make for princes and people a complete sacrifice;
so as to cut out to the roots the abuse and error, we must from
this moment dissolve the whole Order. This is why we destroy and
annihilate it completely for the time; we will preserve the
foundations for posterity, which will clear them when humanity, in
better times, can derive some benefit from our holy alliance.[640]

Thus, in the opinion of the Grand Master of German Freemasonry, a secret
sect working within Freemasonry had brought about the French Revolution
and would be the cause of all future revolutions. We shall now pursue
the course of this sect after the first upheaval had ended.

Three years after the Duke of Brunswick issued his Manifesto to the
lodges, the books of Barruel, Robison, and others appeared, laying bare
the whole conspiracy. It has been said that all these books "fell
flat."[641] This is directly contrary to the truth. Barruel's book went
into no less than eight editions, and I have described elsewhere the
alarm that his work and Robison's excited in America. In England they
led to the very tangible result that a law was passed by the English
Parliament in 1799 prohibiting all secret societies with the exception
of Freemasonry.

It is evident, then, that the British Government recognized the
continued existence of these associations and the danger they presented
to the world. This fact should be borne in mind when we are assured that
Barruel and Robison had conjured up a bogey which met with