was the amelioration of the present system of government and legislation, that one of its fundamental rules was to admit "no prince whatever his virtues," that it proposed to abolish--
The slavery of the peasants, the servitude of men to the soil, the rights of main morte and all the customs and privileges which abase humanity, the corvées under the condition of an equitable equivalent, all the corporations, all the maîtrises, all the burdens imposed on industry and commerce by customs, excise duties, and taxes ... to procure a universal toleration for all religious opinions ... to take away all the arms of superstition, to favour the liberty of the press, etc.<sup></sup>
From all this we see then that Mirabeau did not become an Illuminatus in 1786 as I had supposed before this document was known to me, but had been in the Order from the beginning apparently as one of its founders, first under the "Illuminated" name of Arcesilas and later under that of Leonidas. The Memoir found at his house was thus no other than the programme of the Illuminati evolved by him in collaboration with an inner ring of Freemasons belonging to the Lodge Theodore. The correspondence of the Illuminati in fact contains several references to an