Year: 1867

FROM A LECTURE or TIE SCOTTISH


RITE


Thus it is that through the long years
and even ages, the silent Influences work
among the people, and prepare for the
great crisis that, coming Unexpectedly,
changes the fate Of an Empire in an in
slant A single battle frees Lombsrdy
a small italian Kingdom becomes a great
Power in a day and Italian Grand
Dukes, expunged by their people, sink at
once out Of sight, the world looking on
without care or commiseratlon.


1t Is useless to Glamour against IGNO-
RANCE, SUPERSTITION and TYRANNY,
In our Lodges, and repeat the cry Of
LIBERTY. EQUALITY and FRATERNITY! I!
and no more. To widen too much the
| circle Of our exertions, is to invite our
Initiates to do nothing; because we urge
them to what they feel to be impractica-
bic. The object Of Masonry is, on the
contrary, TO effect some practical good,
within the limits of that circle, however
narrow, in which its influences may be
felt. It neither conceals an assault upon
religion under its enmity to superstition,
nor hostility to order and good govern
ment under its opposition to Tyranny.
1 We must take care not to make
our objects either Odious and IN
welcome, or unreal and ehimerical.
The problem whether this or the other
form Of government be preferable, is not
yet solved. 1t is by no means certain
that 3 republican government can be
permanent; the experiment of selecting
rulers, legislators and magistrates by
popular vote, is not as yet successful
and il is not sure that to commit the va
ried powers Of government habitually to
the most incompetent and unfit hands,
is the best mode to perpetuate the ma
tionsI existence. 1t may be that it is as
much q law Of God for nations of men to
be governed by single will as it is for
the bees to have one Queen. Masonry
in Europe has been the prOpagator Of
rePublicanism yet Solomon, the first
Grand Master, was King.


Men and nations will not be free, until
they are fitted to be so; and the form Of
government Of each must be the express
sion Of its fixed habits OF thought and
opinion. A great living example of
Freedom, in the calm, silent dignity of
its strength and peace, governing itself
by means Of its best and wisest, will be,
1rhepeUer such an one eTiSts, the mighti-
est antagonist of Despotism and arbitrary
Power: and their best ally is a Republic,
governing or uEsgOverning itself by its
smallest intellects, and at last plunged
into dissension and civil war by inca
pacity and folly.


Where it is needed, Masonry lsbors to
set limits to arbitrary Power; elsewhere,
it may be equally its duty to maintain
order in Institutions and ideas, and to set
limits to excesses in another direction,
for THE PEOPLE too may play the Tyrant,
and crush out individual independence
of thought and opinion, as ruthlessly as
ever an Emperor did and a republic
may 50 conduct itself, as to disgust other
nations with liberty itself, and make
them proud Of their own fetters. There
is a Despotisn even in republics: and it
is even where men have been most free,
and have least felt the weight Of Govern !
ment, where universal suffrage prevails,
and that bastard equality that brings all
men dOtCn to one common level, and that
the people, in dangerous emergencies, are |
most ready to submit to military despot-
ism, and tamely allow the sword to de-
throne the laws, and the minions Of ille- |
gitimste Power to usurp the function of
the Iaw-maker and the judiciary. When |
q great danger impends, such a people |
ever hastens TO become the slave of a |
single will. History is ever repeating |
itself; and human nature remains the |
same through all the ages.