The Jesuit Conspiracy

THE JESUIT CONSPIRACY. THE SECRET PLAN OF THE ORDER. DETECTED AND REVEALED BY THE ABBATE LEONE. 11. VICTOR CONSIDXRANT. Member of the National Assembly of France, and of the Municipal Council of the Seine LONDON: Reproduced in Electronic Form 2002 Rank of Wisdom* --UlrrO P.O. Box 926 Louisville, KY 40201 U.S.A. EDITOR'S PREFACE, IN putting forth a publication like the present, the authenticity of which will undoubtedly be strongly contested by those who are interested in so d&g---one, moreover, which does not belong to the class of writings emanating from the Societary School, and which I edit in my own individual capacity, I am bound to accompany it with a testimonial, and with some personal explanations. 1. I had long been aware of the existence of the Secret Plan, of which I had received accounts from many of my friends in Geneva. Their esteem and affection for M. Leone were of a very warm nature. They spoke of him in terms that excluded all suspicion of fraud. The objects too of his constant studies, the elevation of his ideas, and his religious labours in the Ed@cateur, indicated a man of serious character, loving goodness, and pursuing truth with natural and sincere ardour. Notwithstanding all these grounds for a favour- able prejudice, I confess that I could not bring myself to believe what had been told me of the Jesuit Cor8ference. b ii EDITOR'S PREFACE. Visiting Geneva in September, 1846, I heard the secret Plan much talked of, and on ~11 hmds I receive& the most positive assurancesof M. Leone’s good faith. Among those to whom he had made complete disclo- sures-and there were a great number of such persons- I did not meet with one who was not convinced of the authenticity of the Conference, and of the narrator’s veracity. Nevertheless it was not until I had had some very serious conversations with men whose perspicacity and good scme it would have been absurd in me to disregard-men who hadlong held intercourse with M. Leone, and frequently heard his manuauript read-that my incredulity was shaken. I felt, indeed, Lhat dLar all I was infinitely less competent to decide in the matter than those whose judgment upon it was opposed to mine, and that not having seen the documents or conversed with the witness, it would have been presumptuous and irra- tional in me to settle dogmatically that they were wrong and that I was right. I therefore suspended my judgment, and abstained from forming any positive opinion on the subject. It was in Paris, towards the close of 1846, that I first saw M. Leone. I scarcely spoke to him about his manuscript, for which I was informed he had found a publisher. I awaited the appearance of the work to become acquainted with its contents. I must confessthat at that time I did not believe much in the Jesuits, and therefore I was disposed to . EDITOR’S PREFACE. 111 attach but little importance to the publication of the ch$fb-ence. It had always strnck MC that the publio did the Jesuits too much honour in giving themselves so much concern about them. I believed. indeed that the order was deeply committed to very retrograde ideas, but I did not give it credit for the activity, profundity, or Machiavellian ubiquity generally im- put&l to it. In 51 word, to use a phrase tlraL acc;ur~Lely expresses what I then thought, I calculated that at least a discount of hum shy LU eighty per cent should be struck off from the current estimate respecting the Jesuits. As for their obscurantist and retrograde conspiracy, I thought it of no more account against the develop- ment of human progress and liberty, than the barriers of sand raised by children against the tides of the ocean. And even now, though enlightened as to the character and intrinsic power of the celebrated Com- pany, I still persist in that opinion ; for, however strong the arms that raise it, the anti-democratic barrier is still but a rampart of shifting sand, incapable of stopping the rising tide: at most it can but trouble the clear- ness of the foremost waves, II. By-and-bye M. Leone was a more frequent atten- dant at our weekly conversations on Wednesday at the of&e of the Dkmocratie Pac@pe. He spoke to me of a work on which he was engaged, and appointed a day on which to read me a copious exposition of the iv EDITOR'S PREFACE. argument. I listened to it with the liveliest interest, 2nd WRS rleerly impressed by its contents. They re- lated to the publication of extremely important documents, stamped with the highest edclesiastical sanction, absolutely authentic beyond all cavil, and formed to shatter the coarse and oppressive carapace of the Catholic Theocracy:” and place in the most shining light the democratic a&d humanitary ChrisGaui~y oL’ the gospel, and the fathers of the first three centuries. It is the lamp that sets fire LU At: busl~ol. The publication of this work, resting on the most solid bases, ar~d or a theoretic value altogether superior, appeared to me most important. The Introduction * THEOCRACY. Excepting the rigorously defined terms used in mathematics, almost all words in the language haye very diverse meamngs ; yet with good faith and some intelligence a mutual under- standing is always possible. Rut to avoid every false interpretation of the word Theocracy, which occurs frequently in the preface, I declare that both therein, and in the rest of the work, it is employed in its historical signification, and not at all in its grand and beautiful etymological sense. Theocracy, in its historical import, is the usurpation of the tem- poral government by a caste or sacerdotal bdy, aq~~aled from the people, and exercising political, social, and religious despotism. For this Theocracy religion is but a means, domination is the end. The etymological meaning of the same word is, on the contrary, the governmentof God, the coming of that reign of God, which Jesus com- mands us to pray for to our heavenly Pather, and to establish amongst us ; that is to say, the ideal ofgovernment here below-democracy, evan- p.elically, harmoniously, and religiously orgnnised. Tn thin sense, far from repudiating Theocracy, no one would desire it more ardently than I ! EDITOR’S PRPFACE2 . V was complete, and was about to be published separately in one volume, for which I was making the necessary corrections, when Leone received from one of our common friends in Geneva intelligence of a breach of confidence committed by his copyist, and the advertise- ment of the approaching publication of the Secret Plan in Berne. On receiving this news, the &tails uf which are given in the subsequent introduction, Leone changed his $ms. B e b cggcd me tu by aside the first work, and immediately publish the lrecret Plan in Paris, so as if possibleto anticipate ~llt: necessarily faulty, trun- cated, and wholly unsubstantiated edition that was about to appear in SwitzerlanLi. But the notice he had received was too late, and ere long he had in his hands a copy of a b(~d edition, containing a part only of’ his MS., printed at Berne, without name or testimonial, and which in its anonymous garb-the livery of shame -did not and could not obtain any general notice. Thenceforth Leone’s solicitude was not, so much to hasten as to perfect the publication which was already in the press, and to make the third part (corroborative proofs), which is entirely wanting in the Berne edition, as complete as circumstancescould require or allow. III. At that period there no longer remained any doubt in my mind as to the authenticity of the Secret Conference and Leone’s sincerity. 62 vi EDITOR’S PREFACE. To suppose that his story was a romance, the Con- .fere?zcea lying fabrication, and that Leone made me at once the dupe and the accomplice of a calumnious hoax, it wouId be necessaryto esteemhim the vilest and most despicable of men, considering the mutual relations that had grown up between us. But those relations had fully justified in my eyes the high estimat’ewhich our common friends in Geneva, who had known him long and intimately, had formed of his integrity, high- mindedness,2nd goodnessof soul. I therefore declare, that if the circumstances detailed in the following narrative present to the reader’s eyes an ext,ra.ordina.ry character and a romantic appearance, calculated to stagger his belief, I f or my part would regard as a still more inexplicable mystery, the quantum of baseness, and the power of fraud, which Leone must have been endowed with, in order so long to beguile the attached friends he had found in Geneva and Paris. Leone has given us such strong positive proofs of disinterested- ness, single-minded sincerity, and incapacity to play an assumedpart, that far from ascribing to him the hcully yf myalifying anrl duping others, those who know him see in him, along with an unswerving devotednessto principle and truth, one vf those natures which, while they preserve in mature age the confi- ding simplicity and sensibility of early youth, are much rather themselves exposed to be deceived every day. EDTTOR'S PREFACE. vii IV. But the guarantees afforded by the character of the witness are not the only motives that have convinced me of the authenticity of his testimony. Thousands of proofs, incidents of conversation, questions put at long intervals on delicate points, and imperceptible circumstances of the drama, have always resulted in an agreement so exact, positive, and formal, that truth alone could produce such perfect ooaptation.

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