those of the Order in general.
What were these aims? A plan of social and political "reform" which, as M. Barthou points out, much resembled the work accomplished later by the Constituent Assembly in France. This admission is of great importance; in other words, the programme carried out by the Constituent Assembly in 1789 had been largely formulated in a lodge of German Freemasons who formed the nucleus of the Illuminati, in 1776. And yet we are told that Illuminism had no influence on the French Revolution!
It will be objected that the reforms here indicated were wholly admirable. True, the abolition of the corvée, of main morte, and of servitudes were measures that met with the approval of all right-minded men, including the King of France himself. But what of the abolition of the "working guilds" and "all the corporations," that is to say, the "trade unions" of the period, which was carried out by the infamous Loi Chapelier in 1791, a decree that is now generally recognized as one of the strangest anomalies of the Revolution? Again, to whose interest was it to do away with the customs and excise duties of France? To establish the absolute and unfettered liberty of the press and religious opinions? The benefits these measures might be expected to confer on the French people were certainly problematical, but there could be no doubt of their utility to men who, like Frederick the Great, wished to ruin France and to break the Franco-Austrian alliance by the unrestricted circulation of libels against Marie