390 THE FRENCH BLOOD IN AMERICA 



the English Puritans and Pilgrims — the spirit that 

 founded our free Republic, in which freedom of conscience 

 is recognized. Here there is not merely toleration for the 

 varying religious views, but in matters of opinion all are 

 free and equal. Hence there has been a close union be- 

 tween Protestantism and Freemasonry — both standing for 

 civil and religious liberty and the rights of man. 



One of the strong defenses of Freemasonry was called 

 forth by the Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII against 

 ''Freemasonry and the Spirit of the Age," dated April 

 20, 1884. The unwarranted charges made in this official 

 letter against Freemasonry were answered by " A Reply 

 Lib^rty"^""^ of Freemasonry in behalf of Humanity," from the Su- 

 preme Council, thirty-third degree, of the Ancient 

 Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, for the Southern 

 Jurisdiction of the United States of America, through 

 Albert Pike, Grand Commander. We quote from his 

 Allocution these forcible words : 



If the Encyclical Letter of Leo XIII, entitled, from its opening 

 words, Humanus Gemcs, had been nothing more than a denunciation of 

 Freemasonry, I should not have thought it worth replying to. But 

 under the guise of a condemnation of Freemasonry, and a recital of 

 the enormities and immoralities of the order, in some respects so ab- 

 surdly false as to be ludicrous, notwithstanding its malignity, it 

 proved to be a declaration of war, and the signal for a crusade, against 

 the rights of men individually and of communities of men as organ- 

 isms ; against the separation of Church and State, and the confinement 

 of the church within the limits of its legitimate functions ; against 

 education free from sectarian influences ; against the great doctrine 

 upon which, as upon a rock not to be shaken, the foundations of our 

 Kepublic rest, that "men are superior to institutions and not institu- 

 tions to men " ; against the right of the people to depose oppressive, 

 cruel and worthless rulers ; against the exercise of the rights of free 

 thought and free speech, and against, not only republican, but all con- 

 stitutional government. 



In the eye of the Papacy it is a crime to belong to an Order thus 



Liberty of constituted reqiiiring only belief in God and immortality, and allow- 



CrUn"*"'^* * ing ^"1^ liberty of conscience in religious belief ; and this the letter of 



Pope Leo preaches to Roman Catholics living in a Republic, the very 



