The distinction taken by masonry in matters of expulsion, seems to be thus: if a member cheats the lodge out of a farthing he is expelled as an unworthy member; but he may rob and plunder the rest of the community just as much as he pleases,-nay, even kill his fellow man, and he is not guilty of any masonic offence. But there is another, perhaps a stronger reason why Bruce and Whitney were not expelled,-they had not only not behaved themselves unmasonically, but they had served their masonic brethren in the most approved masonic manner, by abducting and murdering the victim of masonic vengeance. Masonry, sir, is the same every where, what has happened in New York, may happen in Pennsylvania, and I am not prepared to say that it has not so happened. I have never yet heard a mason, great or small, say that the oaths and obligations were not the same every where. Permit me now, to identify the institution of free masonry, as an institution acting officially with the abduction and murder of Morgan. It is a well known fact that the general grand chapter of the United States, went in session at the city of New York, in September, 1826, at the very time of the abduction and murder of Morgan: and it is equally well known, as an historical fact, that a mason came into the chapter at the time of their session, and informed them that he had obtained certain manuscripts and printed sheets, purporting to be a revelation of the secrets of free masonry, and we have the word of a member of that chaptar, that the general grand chapter agreed to take no notice whatever of these manuscripts and printed sheets, and ordered them to be restored. Now, sir, I will present to the consideration of the convention, the circumstance just alluded to, in connexion with the doings of the grand royal arch chapter of the state of New York, which met at Albany, in February, 1827. The latter body put forth a disclaimer of all knowledge individually and collectively and of all participation in the abduction and murder of Morgan, and yet, sir, at the same session of that body, while they were framing their disclaimer, they vote the sum of one thousand dollars of their funds, for the relief of these very murderers; or in other words, they gave them this large sum of money to enable them more effectually to elude and mock the justice of the country. By the rule of three, then, if the grand royal arch chapter of the state of New York, gave one thousand dollars for this purpose; what should the general grand chapter of the United States, have given? For myself, I am willing that the people should judge of this. These are historical facts, which cannot be tortured or perverted, and will be found in the same book 227 and 228.

In

I will now close this disgusting recital by giving another instance. the same book we find the grand lodge of the state of New York voting two hundred and fifty dollars to Eli Bruce, one of the convicted conspirators. Do not, I ask, these facts fully, completely, and triumphantly identify free masonry with the abduction and murder of Morgan? and is not the institution chargeable, with undying never ending reproach and guilt for her participation in this damnable deed? If her kings, princes, knights and masters here, deny the fact; I challenge them to produce the records of the chapters and lodges referred to, and I pledge myself to convict them of it. I have now, sir, but a few words more to say. That is on the conduct of the press in this affair. I have been taught in

my youth to look upon the press as a sentinel on the watch towers of liberty, but I have lived to see it sleep the sleep of death, almost while labouring under the effects of powerful masonic narcotics. We have seen that press in the hands of the members of the order, degraded, sunk, fallen from its high place,-it neglected, or it refused to enlighten the public mind on the subject of this masonic murder,—it dared not speak in the bold language of freedom; it was paralized by speculative free masonry! I regret, sir, the occasion which calls for this allusion. I could not say less and will not now say more; but will never cease to deplore the degradation of the American press in the instance alluded to. In conclusion, Mr. President, permit me to say, that I believe I have proved to your entire satisfaction and to the entire satisfaction of this conven

tion

That masonry is not ancient:

That it is political :

That its oaths are wicked and abominable :

That it is subversive of religion,

And that it has prostrated the laws of the country. I therefore, here, in place as a member of this body, in the name of the people of Pennsylvania, of whom my immediate constituents form a very considereble portion:

Charge speculative free-masonry with imposing oaths and obligations on its members unauthorized by and inconsistent with the laws of the country:

That it binds its members to give a preference to each other in all things, over the rest of their fellow citizens:

To apprise each other of all approaching danger"-whether such danger arises from the legal prosecution of their own crimes and misde. meanors, or otherwise :

To conceal the secrets and crimes of each other not even excepting murder and treason:

To evenge even unto death the violation of any of the masonic oaths, and the revelation of any of their secrets:

That the rights and ceremonies of the lodge are of mean, degrading, impious and immoral character:

That the candidates are stripped nearly naked and led to the imposition of their awful oaths, hood-winked with a rope or cord around their neck, called a "cable tow:"

That in the royal arch degree, they affect to enact the sublime and sacred scene of GoD appearing to Moses in the burning bush of Mount Horeb :

That it is anti republican and an insidious and dangerous enemy to our democratic form of government:

That it creates and sustains secret orders of nobility in violation of the spirit of the constitution :

That it is a regularly organised kingdom, within the limits of this republic, assuming and secretly exercising all the prerogatives and powers of an independent kingdom:

That it secures an undue advantage to the members of the fraternity over the uninitiated farmer, mechanic and laborer in all the ordinary business transactions of life :

It presses a corrupt brother in appointment to office :

It prevents the wholesome enactment and the due administration of the laws:

It corrupts our courts of justice, and converts the trial by jury (instead of being the palladium of our rights) into an engine of favoritism and masonic fraud:

Its whole tendency is to cherish a hatred of democracy and a love of aristocracy and legal forms and powers.

For the reasons, I hope that this amendment will be adopted and become a part of the amended constitution of the state.

Mr. CHANDLER, of Philadelphia, said I have never Mr. President obtained the floor in this convention with less desire to occupy your attention than at the present moment, and if it were not that my motives might be mistaken, I should certainly relinquish the advantage I hold and suffer the occasion to pass without a comment. The time of this convention is too short to waste in the discussion of irrelevant questions, and I can imagine none more irrelevant than that of free-masonry. I am also unprepared with any peculiar set terms of assault or defence, and the gentleman from Lancaster, it will be remembered, came hither with missiles all proved, and of familiar exercise, drawn from the great armory of anti-masonry.

I had hoped, Mr. President, that as the great Jupiter tonans of antimasonry, (Mr. Stevens) was engaged in his legislative duties at Harrisburg, if indeed he should not therefore be styled the Jupiter Capitolinus, that we earth-born and earth-pressing masons might have passed unseathed, or comforted ourselves with the good old proverb, procul a Jove procul a falmine, but, sir, our confidence was not well founded, the gentleman from Lancaster, envious of the thunderer's fame, has seized his bolts and scattered abroad the tempest as if a revolution had broken out in the antimasonic Olympus: let him beware of the re-action.

There is, sir, nothing new in the language or the sentiment uttered by the gentleman from Lancaster; they are the stale worn out slanders of a politician who has lately changed his coat. I congratulate the gentleman on his oracle. I give him joy of his political preceptor, who has marked out for the delegate from Lancaster a track which must be pleasant to follow, because it is full of variety, always changing.

It is of little consequence to me, sir, or to this convention, whether the order assailed on this floor can establish to antiquity, a claim which the gentleman has so earnestly denied, but I may say to him that he is less acquainted even with the literature of our language than I had sup

posed him, if he imagines that the order can show no record of its existence beyond 1737.

I have, sir, on more than one occasion when I have seen the storm gathering here, bared my head to the blast, and let it pass in silence. Though injured if not insulted by the language used, and the unjust imputations cast upon those with whom I am associated, I have from respect to this honorable body and especially to the political party of which I am a member, forborne retaliation-and I now feel that the marked attention given by the members of this convention, is not due either to me or my subject, but is caused by the political relations in which I stand to the gentleman who has thrown down the gauntlet; that attention shall not be abused. I shall notice only a few of the gentleman's stereotyped charges.

"The silence of the press under masonic influence." Surely the gentleman was unwise to refer to a silence, which if broken must have covered him and his partizans in unspeakable shame; the press spoke manfully of the outrage which gave rise to the anti-masonic party, and never ceased its censure until it was obvious that busy meddling men whose want of talents sunk them in significance, and whose want of industry kept them in poverty, were using the excitement to place themselves at the top of the ebullition and to secure a sort of consequence by the crime of another, which their actual position would never have given them, their vices being of too contemptible a kind to excite extensive notoriety, and their virtues being of that unknown quantity for which science itself has no exponant.

The press in honest hands, Mr. President, said all that public good required, or that a public wrong rendered necessary. The party to which the gentleman from Lancaster seems to be anxious to be considered a head, however, seized that engine of public good and turned it upon the people in a way disgraceful to themselves, if they could be disgraced, and injurious to public morals. They "abused the press most" as bad as did their prototype of old-Sir John Falstaff.

The gentleman from Lancaster has comforted himself with the thought that in quoting from the letters of Colonel Stone, he has used against me the argumentum ad hominum. I have nothing to say of the letters or the man; except that I love and esteem the latter for his worth-and the former I regard as one of those evidences of a peculiar idiosyncracy that received perfect confirmation, on a more recent production upon another popular subject, viz: animal magnetism.

As touching the oaths, with which the gentleman from Lancaster has edified the convention, and imputed to the masonic order, I have little to say; excepting that they seemed to me to be little else than giving special force to certain moral duties, in those who assumed and kept them-and justifying the charge of moral perjury, or false swearing against those who voluntarily took and as voluntarily broke them. I leave the gentleman, however, to settle the question of false swearing with his favorite authors.

But, sir, the titles worn by certain officers of the masonic societies grate most dissonantly on the democratic ears of my friend from Lancaster. How democratic, Mr. President, the Lancaster converts from good old

federalism attempt to be! But what titles do the masons use among themselves, which the most straight-laced democrat of our country, the gentleman from Lancaster himself, does not bestow on others? If the principal officer of a masonic chapter is, within the chamber where he presides, and there alone, styled "most excellent," does not my politically puritanic friend, when he addresses his favorite anti-masonic gov. ernor, call him "your excellency?" If the presiding officer of a lodge is called the "worshipful master," does not the gentleman from Lancaster, most learned in the law, address the court, which of course he rules with his eloquence, by the title of "your honors." The difference is this, that with the masons the title is only used among themselves, with others it is public, and becomes a part of the customs of our commonwealth, as it is a constitutional right in Massachusetts.

Mr. President, the gentleman from Lancaster, has denied with great vehemence that freemasonry is a christian institution. I am, sir, somewhat advanced in the order-have been a member of the institution for more than twenty-five years, and now preside over the highest order of free masons in the commonwealth; holding the office which the gentleman has denominated grand high priest, and I assure the gentleman that masonry never made any pretensions to a christian origin-they never claimed it for themselves, and they never asked to be so considered by others.

It is a charitable-a philanthropic order-feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and comforting the afflicted, of every clime and every creed. It includes in its numbers, Christians, Jews, Mahometans, the Chinese, the African and the Indian-all kinds and all classes of men, excepting atheists and anti-masons.

We

The gentleman from Lancaster, has declared that anti-masoniy is not proscriptive. Why, sir, no one has assailed anti-masonry here. act on the defensive alone. But the the gentleman may, perhaps fail to establish the fact which he asserts in favor of his political order, which denies employment to the mason-shuts against him the door of political preferment-meanly truckles to receive his vote, and then with pharisaical pride, denies him the crumbs which fall from the table which his own labor his spread.

The gentleman has renewed the stale charge of murder, and defeat of justice in the case of William Morgan.

Mr. President, I mention that name with becoming respect, it is marked with red letters in the calender of anti-masonry. But, sir, I remember a case which is not dissimilar. I heard it reported upon the floor of the house of representatives at Harrisburg, when with some twenty-three other citizens I had been dragged to the bar of that house because I was a free mason. It was related by the representative from Warren, I think.

"A discussion arose in a town in that county, between a mason and and an anti-mason, upon the subject which is now occupying the attention, and wasting the time of the convention. The anti-mason at length bit the mason with such severity that he caused his death. The culprit spite of the exertions of his political partizans was imprisoned. The trial was postponed, and at length the prison was broken open, and the pri