Litchfield enquirer., 1831-10-13

ed from no suspicion on my part that there
 was any thing criminal in the Institution, or any thing that placed its members, in the slightest degree. in collision with their al!egI- ance to their country and its laws. On the contrary having been before my initiation, as- sured by gentleman in whom had implicit confidence, that there was nothing in the en- gagement which could affect either my reli- zion or politics (which I considered as com pretending the whole range of my duties, civil and religious. and as extending not to the first degree only but to the whole Mason ic Order) and being further informed that ma ny of the most ilustrious men of Virginia, with General Washington at their head, be- longed tO that order, and had taken the de- gree of Master, did not believe that there could be any thing in the institution at war with their duties as patriots, men and chris tians; nor is it yet possible for me to believe that they cOnld have understood the engage ment as involving any such criminal Obliga- 1 tiOns. l have, thencetorward, continually regarded Masonry as nothing more than a so- cial and charitable club. designed for the pro-
 motion of good feeling among its members and for the pecuniary relief of their indigent brethren. have, indeed, thought very little about it for thirty years. It had dropped from my mind so completely that l do not believe I should have been able to gain ad- mittance into any lodge at all strict in their l examinations, where should have had to de- pend alone on my memory; and so little cOnse- quence did attach 10 it. that whenever Ma sorry has been occasionally introduced as subject Of conversation. have felt more dis posed to smile than to frown. Thinking thus oft, nothing has more surprised me than lo see 1t blown into consequence in the Northern and Eastern States as political engine, and the whole community excited against it as an affair of serious importance. I had heard. in- deed, the general rumour that Morgan had been kidnapped and very probably murdered by ..Masons, for divulging their secrets: but I supposed it to be the act of few ignorant and ferocious despcradocs, moved by their own impulse singly. without the sanction or Knowledge ofthtir lodges; and thus thinking, l have repeatedly and continually, both in conversation and letters of friendship, spoken of Masonry and Anti Masonry as a filter sub ject for farce than tragedy. and have been grieved at seeing some of my friends involv- ed in what appeared to me such wild and bitter and unjust persecution against so harm- less an institution as Free Masonry. I have thought and repeatedly said that considered Masonry as having no more to do with poli- tics than any one of the numerous clubs SO celebrated in the Spectator; and
 
 case, It was quite as uni ust to charge that on Masonry as it would be to charge the private dellnquencies of some professiDg christians on itself. Thus have thought and thus have continually spoken and written in my pr'vate letters to several of my frienGs.- 1t was not until the period of your assembling nere, that on the occasion of friendly visit rom one of your members, and my taking the liberty to rally him on the excessive zeal which had been excited on an occasion SO in- adequate, that he placed before me detail of some of the proceedings on the trials of the conspirators against Morgan when, for the nrst time, saw the Masonic paths as estab- iished by the testimony both of adhering and seeding Masons on the trials in New-York. observed that in one ofthem (called the Row a! Arch) the candidate swears among other things that he will aid and assist a companion hoyal-Arch Mason in distress, and espouse hls cause so far as to extricate him from the same. if in his power, ,ohether he be right or iOrong, and that he will conceal the secrets of a companion Royal-Arch Mason given him in charge as such, murder and treason not en- cepfed and in other paths, in still higher de- grees, also observe that the candidate binds himself to avenge the violated secrets of the Lodge by the infliction of death on the of tender, and to revenge tho wrongs of a broth CT to the utmost extremity and the whole mixed up with the most horrible imprecations and blasphemOus lnockeries of the rites and tenets of the Christian Religion.
 In the details of the trials in the case of | Morgan it became manifest that these oaths are not considered by those who impose and take them as mere idle and unmeaning words
 but that they are viewed as solemn oblga tons which are to be practically enforced
 and which in the case of Morgan there is to,
 much reason to believe were tr0gicoUv en forced. According to the reports of the de-
 tails of those trials as given at some of vom,
 to'n-r meetings, and given at greater length
 at your meetings ia this city, (at one ofwhich
 m common with other citizens, was present ]
 those paths are understood literally, and liter
 a'ly enforced; and, according to the exhibi. tion of the evidence made in those reports. .he conspiracy against Morgan was not, as mas been commonly supposed, the act of a Iew ignorant men, alone but was engender- ca m the lodges themselves, enforced under tne'r direction and supported at their ex- pense; the conspiracy embracing within it's sweep, men of all degrees, men of the learn GU professions, farmers and mechanics with 100 much reason to believe that the secret snergy ot masonic spirit had entered and pol .uteo even the temple of Justice; and with 'ne most demonstratiye proof that the persons who mad entered into these unhallowed oaths
 considered their allegiance to the lodges as of niSher obligation than their allegiance to the laws ot their country. If this be masonry, as according to this uncontradicted evidence <, seems to be, l have no hesitation in sa vino