matter of doubt to the Freemasons of France; on the contrary, they glory in the fact. At the congress of the Grand Orient in 1904 the Freemason Bonnet declared:
In the eighteenth century the glorious line of Encyclopædists formed in our temples a fervent audience which was then alone in invoking the radiant device as yet unknown to the crowd: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The revolutionary seed quickly germinated amidst this *élite*. Our illustrious Freemasons d'Alembert, Diderot, Helvétius, d'Holbach, Voltaire, Condorcet, completed the evolution of minds and prepared the new era. And, when the Bastille fell, Freemasonry had the supreme honour of giving to humanity the charter (i.e. the Declaration of the Rights of Man) which it had elaborated with devotion. (*Applause*.)
This charter, the orator went on to say, was the work of the Freemason Lafayette, and was adopted by the Constituent Assembly, of which more than 300 members were Freemasons.
But in using the