Secret Societies and Subversive Movements | Page 2

holds
good: "Tout est permis pour quiconque agit dans le sens de la
révolution."
All this was unknown to me when I first embarked on my work. I knew
that French writers of the past had distorted facts to suit their own
political views, that a conspiracy of history is still directed by certain
influences in the masonic lodges and the Sorbonne; I did not know that
this conspiracy was being carried on in this country. Therefore the
publisher's warning did not daunt me. If I was wrong either in my
conclusions or facts I was prepared to be challenged. Should not years
of laborious historical research meet either with recognition or with
reasoned and scholarly refutation? But although my book received a
great many generous and appreciative reviews in the press, criticisms
which were hostile took a form which I had never anticipated. Not a
single honest attempt was made to refute either my French Revolution
or World Revolution by the usual methods of controversy; statements
founded on documentary evidence were met with flat contradiction
unsupported by a shred of counter evidence. In general the plan
adopted was not to disprove, but to discredit by means of flagrant
misquotations, by attributing to me views I had never expressed, or
even by means of offensive personalities. It will surely be admitted that
this method of attack is unparalleled in any other sphere of literary
controversy.
It is interesting to notice that precisely the same line was adopted a
hundred years ago with regard to Professor Robison and the Abbé
Barruel, whose works on the secret causes of the French Revolution
created an immense sensation in their day. The legitimate criticisms
that might have been made on their work find no place in the diatribes
levelled against them; their enemies content themselves merely with
calumnies and abuse. A contemporary American writer, Seth Payson,
thus describes the methods employed to discredit them:
The testimony of Professor Robison and Abbé Barruel would doubtless
have been considered as ample in any case which did not interest the
prejudices and passions of men against them. The scurrility and odium

with which they have been loaded is perfectly natural, and what the
nature of their testimony would have led one to expect. Men will
endeavour to invalidate that evidence which tends to unveil their dark
designs: and it cannot be expected that those who believe that "the end
sanctifies the means" will be very scrupulous as to their measures.
Certainly he was not who invented the following character and
arbitrarily applied it to Dr. Robison, which might have been applied
with as much propriety to any other person in Europe or America. The
character here referred to, is taken from the American Mercury, printed
at Hartford, September 26, 1799, by E. Babcock. In this paper, on the
pretended authority of Professor Ebeling, we are told "that Robison had
lived too fast for his income, and to supply deficiencies had undertaken
to alter a bank bill, that he was detected and fled to France; that having
been expelled the Lodge in Edinburgh, he applied in France for the
second grade, but was refused; that he made the same attempt in
Germany and afterwards in Russia, but never succeeded; and from this
entertained the bitterest hatred to masonry; and after wandering about
Europe for two years, by writing to Secretary Dundas, and presenting a
copy of his book, which, it was judged, would answer certain purposes
of the ministry, the prosecution against him was stopped, the Professor
returned in triumph to his country, and now lives upon a handsome
pension, instead of suffering the fate of his predecessor Dodd."[2]
Payson goes on to quote a writer in The National Intelligencer of
January 1801, who styles himself a "friend to truth" and speaks of
Professor Robison as "a man distinguished by abject dependence on a
party, by the base crimes of forgery and adultery, and by frequent
paroxysms of insanity." Mounier goes further still, and in his pamphlet
De l'influence attribuée aux Philosophes, ... Francs-maçons et ...
Illuminés, etc., inspired by the Illuminatus Bode, quotes a story that
Robison suffered from a form of insanity which consisted in his
believing that the posterior portion of his body was made of glass![3]
In support of all this farrago of nonsense there is of course no
foundation of truth; Robison was a well-known savant who lived sane
and respected to the end of his days. On his death Watt wrote of him:
"He was a man of the clearest head and the most science of anybody I

have ever known."[4] John Playfair, in a paper read before the Royal
Society of Edinburgh in 1815, whilst criticizing his Proofs of a
Conspiracy--though at the same time admitting he had himself never
had access to