SECRET SOCIETIES.*
THERE are only three countries where secret societies possess any real strength—China, Italy, and Russia—and for this very reason, that they are still vigorous, our know- ledge of these sects is limited. Of India we cannot speak with certainty. Russia and China naturally have such societies ; they are the breath of the people in countries ruled by despots, and the cruder, the more corrupt and the more wasteful of human life a despotism is, the more firmly rooted will a patriotic society be. The Italians have a natural genius for them, and so, though they no longer have a worthy object, if they ever had one, the Mafia and the Camorm still exist, in spite of the moat determined efforts of a popular Government to suppress them. The Italians have some excuse. For centuries Italy has been a huge battlefield, and its people subject to numerous petty tyrants and one big tyranny, and life without some sort of social organisation would have been unbearable. Still, the later secret societies were simply bands of brigands, the Carbonari alone ranking as a true patriotic federation; and they, indeed, are no more. Italian poverty is no doubt the most important factor in keeping alive the Mafia, which, however, derives much support from those who have neither the courage nor the self-respect to assert their independence.
In China the great Hung League a few years ago sprang up vigorously once more, and Sarawak and Perak became hotbeds of branch associations. The Brooke Dynasty grappled with the Hung League successfully, but Perak apparently is still a stronghold of various societies. Life is held cheap by the Government, so that the associates are nearly as reckless as they can be. To-day the Ka-lao-Hui, originally formed for the purpose of preventing officials plundering the pay of the soldiers, is the moat formidable organisation in China. What the real aims of the Ka-leo-Hui are now we do not know, except that they are anti-foreign and anti-missionary, but the finding of one of its calico tickets on the person of a Chinaman is his death-warrant. Of course, ail Chinese secret societies are anti-dynastic, and if it was not for the fact that they are, more or less, in earnest, one might feel amused at their ever hopeful efforts to overthrow the hated Tartar, who has not been on the throne for more than six hundred years. Chinese initiation ceremonies appear to have one general feature, the killing of a cock and drinking its blood.
Societies such as the Carbonari and the Hetairia one can but respect; if they actually failed in their immediate object, their ultimate aim was attained by quickening the pulse of freedow. Nor can Englishmen withhold admiration from the Nihilists, however much we disapprove of their methods. The courage and self-sacrifice of the women are marvellous, and the coward can scarcely help becoming a hero when supported to the death by his womankind. The year 1880 marked the highest tide in the flood of Nihilism, and since then the strength of the society has steadily waned. It is not extinct, nor will it die till its object is achieved, or the flow of liberal ideas rises to a critical flood-level which, if the State police numbered millions, could not be dammed. Just as in physics, there exists a critical temperature beyond which by no amount of pressure can you compel a liquid to retain its liquid state,—it must become gas. We must remember that the officials killed by the Nihilists were all men who exceeded their powers, to say nothing of common humanity. Men who did their duty were not punished. It was only those who were of the Governor Darling type— deliberately cruel—whom the Executive Committee "tipped the Black Spot to." Murder of course it was, but one's pity for the victim takes the form of regret that he had not time to repent. According to Mr. Heckethorn, the number of actual Nihilists was never really large, a few dozens at the most, but they were assisted by hundreds of people in all ranks of life, who sup- plied funds, though not to anything like the extent generally imagined, and, most important fact of all, concealed hunted men and women. The amount of money used by the Nihilists is not much because they are honest conspirators and too • The Secret Societies of All Agee arid Countries. By 0. W. Ucckethorn. 2 vols. New Edition. London George Redway.
thoroughly in earnest to spend it on themselves ; if any one's pockets are lined they are those of the chemical manufac- turers. We trust, however, that the period of aggressive Nihilism is past,—from whatever standpoint we review its methods, they cannot possibly be tolerated. They naturally follow a ferocious system of persecution, and it seems arbitrary to condemn the one while we cannot prevent the other ; but no irresponsible body of men must be allowed to think for an instant that they have the right of life and death, however pure their motives. The best of the judiciary societies failed to preserve its integrity for very long, and one, the Ku-Klux, lost it at once.
The Holy Vehm no doubt began well, but its powers were soon abused, and its most vigorous period coincided with the most lawless and disorderly time in local history. The great could get its decisions reversed, and the dread of its tribunal gave rogues the opportunity of blackmailing honest people. According to Lindner it confused the administration of justice instead of assisting it. Still, it was founded in a rough time —the thirteenth century—and, circumstances considered, did its work well, by popular acknowledgment, for a couple of centuries. Here we have a judiciary secret society with a regular legal procedure, arrogating the most extreme and summary powers ; it was death to warn a condemned person, and death to an uninitiated person found at the secret court. Theoretically speaking, only one person was exempt from their rules and penalties, and he was the Emperor, and in 1470 three of the Lords Justices cited the Emperor himself. The first thing when men grew more civilised was to restrict its summary powers and its right of citation. We might compare it with the Lynch Law of the West, with this important reservation, that while the judgment of the Vehm was the deliberate secret and calculated action of the few, Lynch Law is the spontaneous explosion of the popular conscience. A man sentenced by the Vehm in contumaciam had had fair play allowed him and a chance of proving his innocence, and so no more law was allowed him ; no one so much as dared hint that " good bread might be eaten elsewhere." On the prairie a man shoots some one and knows that he will be wanted for it. He has as much law as elapses from the deed to the start of the avengers ; it is not much, it is true, but, nevertheless, it gives him a fair start ; for hours, it may be, he is the only person who knows the reason of his flight. Theoretically, Lynch Law is a perfect corrective for a lawless state of society ; but, unfortunately, as the prairie farmer is a busy man, and a rough-and-ready one too, as a Justice of the Peace he is somewhat awkwardly blindfolded. He knows he is out after some one, and is too sternly indignant to make sure that he has got the right man. This is most unfortunate, as the length of the trial is generally regulated by its distance from the nearest tree. However, though this liability to error is a serious drawback to Lynch Law, it must be allowed to be a better institution than the Holy Vehm, or the Beati Paoli, or the Ku-Klux of the Southern States. It does not confuse the administration of justice by aping any of its formality, though it interferes with it occasionally by taking criminals out of the Sheriff's hands, and then it is probably not far wrong. The Ku-Klux was originally a genuine judiciary society, but from the first the ill-governed ferocity of its methods rendered it intolerable, if necessary ; it is now entirely in the hands of "mean whites."
The traveller in Sicily may have heard the "Beati Paoli" mentioned by some badly treated individual, with apparently sincere regret. Its motives were the same as those of the Holy Vehm, but of course it could not be expected to retain any semblance of judicial value for long. The idea of a body of Sicilians appointing themselves agents of justice is grotesque ; the accused might as well throw himself at once into the crater of Etna. Yet the " Beati Paoli," an ancient institution like the Vehm, doubtless justified its existence at one time, and it must have acted as a check on the "vendetta."
Third and last of the judiciary societies Mr. Heckethorn places the Inquisition. This is for the sake of convenience, as he cannot place it probably in any other category. He has many bitter things to say about it. He probably does not allow it to be a true judiciary society any more than we should. The Inquisition was technically the secret tribunal and executive committee of the dominant religious party of the day. It punished opinions, not crimes, and its decisions were supported by the State, and, as a mere matter of fact
and common-sense, confused the actual Administration more than any irresponsible Vehm or Beati Paoli did. Such a body as the Inquisition had no more claim to the title of judiciary than had Jones who killed Brown because the latter, being colour-blind, declared some red palings to be green. Mr. Heckethorn has added considerably to his article on the Inquisition, mostly facts of an unpleasant nature. Some of these have been denied, naturally enough, for they seem incredible; but horrible as they are, archives and docu- ments of the great officials of the Inquisition place them beyond the reach of argument. Even now that we are nearing the beginning of another century, the story of the Inquisition makes the coolest-blooded angry. Less than ninety years ago Napoleon, in Spain, wrote the memorable words : "The Inquisi- tors are to be made prisoners, their revenues are confiscated." Lumanuski, having carried out the first part of this laconic order, but not finding the appurtenances of the Inquisitors, was on the point of retiring, when some one suggested the testing of the floor. The dungeons were then discovered with their dead and their living, and finally the instruments of torture, at the sight of which the fury of the soldiers knew no bounds ; Lumanuski says he saw four priests racked. Ferdinand VIL restored it with English aid ! the people rose against it ; again it and Ferdinand were restored, this time by the French, with curtailed powers. Still, three years later, in 1826, it hung a Jew and burnt a Quaker. Why does not Mr. Heckethorn place the Ku-Klux clan among the judiciary societies P Their claim to rank as one is indisputable, what. ever their present traits, and superior to any pretensions of the Inquisition.
There are many societies, once powerful, that no longer possess any interest for us ; the secret political societies of the day—secret societies are always political now—are what really interest us. But in the old days secret societies had other objects. What these were we do not always know, though those of the East had mainly philosophy in view. The Egyptians had mysteries of the most elaborate kind, and in Asia there are societies which still retain peculiar initiation ceremonies. The "Illuminati" founded by Weishanpt in Germany is the only European society that we can compare to them, and the " Illuminati" was really a social secret society. The Assassins of the Middle Ages and the Thugs of India could not be described as political societies. In speaking of India it is unnecessary to mention any secret society, because each religious sect may have a secret organisation of which, of course, we know nothing, except that they have an almost perfect " Intelligence Department." That we do know. The Thugs, as an anti-social and criminal society, we had to put down. They had a semi- religious origin, a fact which accounts for the vitality of their horrible practices. European contemporaries of the Thugs were the Chauffeurs of France, the Gardenia of Spain, (the once invaluable assistants of the Inquisitors, and who still exist in the Spanish mountains), and the Camorra, the Mala Vita, and the Mafia of unfortunate Italy. Russia has the horrible sect of the Skopzi, who mutilate themselves, and for them no severity can be amiss ; also the Self-Burners, who commit suicide by means of fire ; and the Self-Sacrificers, who kill each other with cold steel.
Mr. Heckethorn has added so much new material to his first edition of 1875 that, as practically a new book, it was necessary to draw attention to it. And though half the mystery that surrounds the members of secret organisations disappears when we come to examine it, yet enough remains to excite a great deal of fascination. Moreover, in two great empires and one large kingdom we can to-day see the baneful workings of anti-social and political secret societies.
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