Niall Ferguson Quote

Until the archives of the Masonic lodges became accessible, researchers were heavily reliant on memoirs and documents confiscated and published by the Order’s foes. Amongst the materials said to have been in Franz Xaver Zwackh’s possession were impressions of government seals to be used for counterfeiting, dissertations in defence of suicide, instructions for making poisonous gas and secret ink, a description of a special safe for the safeguarding of secret papers, and receipts for procuring abortions, along with a formula for making a tea that would induce an abortion. We now know that these were hardly representative of the Order’s activities

Niall Ferguson

Until the archives of the Masonic lodges became accessible, researchers were heavily reliant on memoirs and documents confiscated and published by the Order’s foes. Amongst the materials said to have been in Franz Xaver Zwackh’s possession were impressions of government seals to be used for counterfeiting, dissertations in defence of suicide, instructions for making poisonous gas and secret ink, a description of a special safe for the safeguarding of secret papers, and receipts for procuring abortions, along with a formula for making a tea that would induce an abortion. We now know that these were hardly representative of the Order’s activities

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About Niall Ferguson

Niall Campbell Ferguson FRSE (; born 18 April 1964) is a Scottish–American historian who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Previously, he was a professor at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, New York University, a visiting professor at the New College of the Humanities, and a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford.
Ferguson writes and lectures on international history, economic history, financial history and the history of the British Empire and American imperialism. He holds positive views concerning the British Empire. In 2004, he was one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. Ferguson has written and presented numerous television documentary series, including The Ascent of Money, which won an International Emmy Award for Best Documentary in 2009.
Ferguson has been a contributing editor for Bloomberg Television and a columnist for Newsweek. He began writing a semi-monthly column for Bloomberg Opinion in June 2020.