t "the authors of the
Revolution are not more French than German, Italian, English, etc. They
form a particular nation which took birth and has increased in the dark
amidst all civilized nations with the object of subjecting them all to
its domination."[769]

In 1835 the Carbonaro, Malegari, wrote to another member of the
Carbonari:

We form an association of brothers in all points of the globe, we
have desires and interests in common, we aim at the emancipation of
humanity, we wish to break every kind of yoke, yet there is one
that is unseen, that can hardly be felt, yet that weighs on us.
Whence comes it? Where is it? No one knows, or at least no one
tells. The association is secret, even for us, the veterans of
secret societies.[770]

In 1852 Disraeli wrote:

It was neither parliaments nor populations, nor the course of
nature, nor the course of events, that overthrew the throne of
Louis Philippe ...the throne was surprised by the Secret Societies,
ever prepared to ravage Europe.... Acting in unison with a great
popular movement they may destroy society, as they did at the end
of the last century.[771]

In 1874 Pere Deschamps, after his exhaustive study of secret societies,
thus propounded the question:

We have now to ask ourselves whether there is anything but an
identity of doctrines and personal communications between the
members of the different sects, whether there is really a unity of
direction which binds together all the secret societies, including
Free Masonry. Here we touch on the most mysterious point of the
action of secret societies, on that which these national Grand
Orients who declare themselves independent of each other and
sometimes even excommunicate each other conceal most carefully
beneath a veil.[772]

Finally Deschamps is led to the conclusion that there is "a secret
council which directs all masonic societies,"[773] that there are
secret lairs where the chiefs of the sects agree together on their work
of destruction.[774]

It would be easy to multiply quotations of this kind taken from many
different sources. Whether the men who expressed these opinions were, as
we are frequently told, suffering from delusions or not, the fact
remains that the idea of a hidden hand behind world-revolution has
existed for at least 135 years. And when we compare these utterances
with Monsieu