That this preparatory work has begun, that progress in the direction of its fatal completion has been made, that what is now going on in America is part of the same deep-laid and extensive plan which has been in operation in Europe for many years—these, Morse continued, are reasonable and just fears in the light of the disclosures made “in a work written by a gentleman of literary eminence in Scotland, within the last year, and just reprinted in this country, entitled, ‘Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe’.”[622] The following facts are brought to the light of day in this volume: For more than twenty years past a society called THE ILLUMINATED has been in existence in Germany; its express aim is “to root out and abolish Christianity, and overthrow all civil government”;[623] it approves of such atrocious principles as the right to commit self-murder and the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, while it condemns the principles of patriotism and the right to accumulate private property;[624] in the prosecution of its infamous propaganda it aims to enlist the discontented, to get control of all such cultural agencies as the schools, literary societies, newspapers, writers, booksellers, and postmasters;[625] it is bent upon insinuating its members into all positions of distinction and influence, whether literary, civil, or religious.[626] Practically all of the civil and ecclesiastical establishments of Europe have already been shaken to their foundations by this terrible organization; the French Revolution itself is doubtless to be traced to its machinations; the successes of the French armies are to be explained on the same ground.[627] The Jacobins are nothing more nor less than the open manifestation of the hidden system of the Illuminati.[628] The order has its branches established and its emissaries at work in America.[629] Doubtless the “Age of Reason” and the other works of that unprincipled author are to be regarded as part of the general plan to accomplish universal demoralization: the fact that Paine’s infamous works have been so industriously and extensively circulated in this country would seem to justify fully this conclusion.[630] The affiliated Jacobin Societies in America have doubtless had as the object of their establishment the propagation of “the principles of the illuminated mother club in France.”[631]