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To .
EDWARD LIVINGSTON,
ON MASONRY.
P H I L. A. D. E. L. P. H. I.4 :
C. T. Jo NES. 4.
1833

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M, ETTER I.
To EDwARD LIVINGSTON,
General Grand High Priest of the
General Royal Arch Chapter of
the United States, and Secretary
of State of the said United States.
SIR:—In the National Intelligencer
of the 22d of April, 1830, there ap-
pears an Address, there said to have
been delivered by you, to the General
Royal Arch Chapter of the United
States, upon your Installation to the
high Masonic official dignity of their
General Grand High Priest.
In the address, after a feeling and
elegant acknowledgment of the grateful
emotions which you experienced on
being apprized of the unexpected and
unsolicited distinction which had been
conferred upon you by your election to
that office, and a pathetic allusion to
that period of life when all worldly
honours fade into the “sear and yellow
leaf,” you assign as your reason for
accepting the dignity and the charge of
presiding over an association in whose
labours you had “for many years re-
tired from any participation,” that your
refusal might have been “ascribed to
an unmanly fear of encountering the
clamour raised against our Institution,
[of Freemasonry, or to a conscious-
ness, that the vile and absurd accusa-
tions against it were well founded.—
Either of these suspicions (you added)
would have injured not my character
only, but that of the whole fraternity.”
You further assignéd an additional
motive for overcoming the reluctance
suggested by the consciousness that
your long retirement had rendered you
less fit to fill the station than many
others, equally well qualified in other
ſº T. T. E. R. Šo
respects—and this motive was your
confidence in the Masonic skill and
excellent character of the worthy com-
panion who was, at the same solemnity,
installed with you as your Deputy Ge-
neral Grand High Priest.
After these ceremonial preliminaries,
you proceeded as follows: “Compa-
nions and Brethren | For the first time
in the history of our country persecu-
tion has raised itself against our honour-
able fraternity. It does not, indeed, as
in other countries, incarcerate our bo-
dies, strain them on the wheels or con-
sume them in the flames of the Inqui-
sitions: but its attacks are, to an honour-
able mind, as unjustifiable. It assails
our republication with the blackest ca-
lumnies; strives, by the most absurd
inventions, to deprive us of the confi-
dence of our fellow-citizens; belies the
principles of our order, and represents
us as bound to each other by obligations
subversive of civil order, and hostile to
religion.” ^
Mr. Livingston—In moulding this
personified image of persecution, did it
never occur to you that the foul and
midnighihag who justly bears that name,
is never to herself more deliciously oc-
cupied than in charging persecution
upon others? In those Holy Scrip-
tures, which it is your official duty to
read and expound to your companions
and brethren of the Royal Arch, it is
related, that when your predecessor in
the High Priesthood, Ananias, com-
manded that Paul should be smitten on
the mouth, the Apostle of the Gentiles
turned upon him and said, “God shall
Smite thee, thou whited wall; for sittest
thou to judge me after the law, and
commandest me to be smitten, contrary
to the law?” I will not imitate this
exclamation of Paul, for which he him.
self apologised, when informed that it
was the High Priest to whom he spoke
—but I will ask you, sir, to reconsider
this charge of persecution, imputed by
you, in the face of the world, not in-
deed to any individual by name, but
to a numerous and respectable class of
your fellow citizens in nine or ten
States of the Union—to all that class
of citizens known in the community by
the denomination of Antimasons. I am
one of them myself. As respects my-
self I know, as regards the whole party
I firmly believe, that in the above pas-
sage of your address, you did them great
injustice. In charging them with ca-
lumny, you calumniated them yourself.
In accusing them of persecution, you
was yourself the persecutor.
I will not say that on your part this
persecution and calumny were wilful.
You had for many years retired from
any participation in the labours of the
Craft. If this fact is not very pregnant
of evidence, that, in your estimation,
the labours of the Craft were, when
you participated in them, of a high or-
der of public usefulness or private be-
neficence, it exculpates you at least from
all participation in labours of evil. You
did not know what new labours had,
most especially in your own native
state of New York, and extensively
elsewhere, been engrafted upon the old
stock. You did not know the additions
which had been, in many Lodges and
Chapters, made to the whole gradua-
tion of your oaths. The tree had not
borne all its fruits. The Morgan tra-
gedy had been enacted, and more than
three years of impunity had, in evasion
or defiance of the laws of nature, of
justice and of the land, sheltered the
guilt of its perpetrators: but you did
not know, nor was there mortal out of
the pale of your penalties who did
know, the catalogue of Masonic crimes
which had been committed in affiliated
connexion with that Masonic murder
—you know them not to this day.
Multitudes of them are, and will ever
remain, secreted under the seal of the
fifth Libation, and under the obligation
to conceal from every person under the
canopy of Heaven, the secrets of a
worTHy brother—murder and treason
not excepted, or excepted at the option
of the swearer. More than a year af-
ter your address was delivered, the
Grand Lodge of Rhode Island pub-
lished a defence of Masonry against
those same charges, which they, like"
you, pronounced persecutions and ca-
lumnies. Yet, even then, they said
that whether Morgan had heen mur-
dered or not they could not tell—for
they knew nothing about it. They
knew nothing about it! They knew
nothing about the facts proved in the
judicial tribunals of New York, not
only by clouds of witnesses, but by the
confessions and pleas of guilty of several
among the conspirators themselves.—
The Grand Lodge of Rhode Island,
one and all knew nothing about all this,
and yet they published a defence of
Masonry, and pronounced persecution
and calumny, the denunciations of vir-
tuous indignation against those very
judicially authenticated facts about
which they declared that they knew
nothing. -
Sir: Your Address to your Royal
Arch Companions had more of candour
or more of discretion. You advised
them that calumnies so absurd as those
uttered against you (the Masons,) were
best met by dignified silence! and yet
you did not meet them by dignified
silence: you pronounced them from
your exalted seat of General Grand
High Priest of the order, black and
abused calumnies, and you attributed
them all to persecution.
But if I am bound to acknowledge
the candour and discretion of your
advice to your brethern to meet the
charges against their Institution with
dignified silence, I cannot offer an equal
tribute of commendation to your con-
sistency, when, after all your bitter
complaints of calumny and persecution,
you urge them to “be just, and reflect
how much cause for excitement has
been given, by the outrageous abduc-
tion of a citizen dragged from his fa-
mily and friends, in the midst of a po-
pulous State, followed up, most proba-
bly, by the perpetration of a most
atrocious murder.” *
You then remind them tha
“It was natural from all the cir-
cumstances of this most extraordinary
and savage act, to believe that it was
committed by Masons.”
Sir, was it not committed by Ma-
sons?
“It was in human nature, unenſight-
ened and prejudiced human nature to
impute the cause of the offence to some
secret tenet of the frate nity, and to in-
vite them in the criminality of their
guilty members.”
Why the words unenlightened and
prejudiced? Was not some secret ten-
et of the fraternity the cause of the of-
fence? That tenet of the fraternity,
secret at the time of the murder of
IMorgan, is secret now no longer. For
the mere intention to reveal it, Morgan
paid the penalty of his Entered Appren-
tice’s Oath—his book revealed it after
his death. Its revelation was authenti-
cated on the 4th of July, 1827, by the
testimony not of unenlightened and
prejudiced human nature, but of the
Le Roy Convention of seceding Ma-
sons—men who themselves had taken
these oaths, and declared themselves
subject to the penalties which had been
inflicted by Masonic hands upon Mor-
3 I).
“ It was natural that ambitious men
should keep up the excitement, and di-
rect it against political adversaries for
their own elevation.”
Perhaps it was. You, Mr. Living-
ston, are versed in the ways of ambition
and of ambitious men. You know their
propensity to keep up excitements,
and to direct them against political ad-
versaries for their own elevation. You
must know—you cannot but know—
that Masonry has been used by ambi-
tious men for the same purposes. You
must know that in many of the New
York lodges, the promise to promote
a brother’s political advancement, was
one of the recent additions to the Ma-
Sonic Obligations. You may, and ought
to know, that wherever the spirit of
Antimasonry has arisen, one of the
first discoveries made by it has been,
that wherever a Lodge or Chapter has
existed, at least three-fourths of all the
elective offices in the place were here
held by worthy brethern and compa-
nions of the craft; chosen by men,
multitudes of whom knew not thern-
selves the influence under which their
votes were cast. You know, too, that
the charge of ambitious and selfish
motives, is one of the vulgarest and
most hacknied imputations of all am-
bitious rivals and competitors against
one another. In condescending to use
it yourself against the Antimasons, you
certainly gave no additional dignity
to it, and as a defence of the institution
against Antimasonry, you might with
advantage to yourself, have remember-
ed your advice to your brethern, and
preferred to such a shield, the armour
of dignified silence. /
“And it was quite natural that men
should be found simple enough not to
see through their views, credulous
enough to believe their absurd tales, or
sufficiently unprincipled to propagate
them, knowing them to be false.”
This again may be true. Of simple
—of credulous—and of unprincipled
men, there are always numbers, in
every community, and they are the
natural instruments of politicians, of
more ambition than principle. But, in
this respect, as in many others, Anti-
masonry is and has been more sinned
against than sinning. Simple and cre-
dulous men have, for example, been
told by the General Grand High Priest
of the General Royal Arch Chapter of
the United States, that the charges
against the Masonic Institution, of
having had some secret tenet, which
was the cause of the murder of Morgan,
were black and absurd calumnies, in-
vented by persecution, and which none
but knaves would propagate. Simple
and credulous men may believe these
assertions of the General Grand High
Priest, because they are made by him,
and because his character gives them
the weight of authority. To simple
and credulous men, the highest of all
evidence is the authority of great names,
and accordingly your only plausible
answer to the Antimasonic charges
made against your Institution, is an ap-
peal to the great and good men who
have belonged and still belong to it.
But, sir, this is not sound reasoning
to influence the minds of other than
simple and credulous men. The ques-
tions, permit me to say, upon the issue
which I am about to take with you, is
not who—but what—not who have
bound themselves by the masonic oaths,
obligations, and penalties: but what
those oaths, obligations, and penalties
are? What is their nature? and what
have been their fruits?
Now, sir, I do aver, that “the cause
of the offence”—that is, of the murder
of William Morgan, and of a multitude
of other crimes indissolubly connected
with it, was a secret tenet of the frater-
nity—secret then, but no longer secret
now. It consisted in the obligation and
penalty of the Entered Apprentice's
Oath” It was the secret tenet of In-
itiation to the Masonic Institution.
This, sir, is the issue which I, an Anti-
mason, tender to you, the General
Grand High Priest of the General
Royal Arch Chapter of the United
States. I call upon you, sir, in that
capacity, to sustain the charge of per-
secution and calumny, made by you in
your Address to your Brethern and
Companions upon your Installation,
against the whole of Antimasons in
the United States, and to sustain the
Institution over which you preside,
against the charges which you pro-
nounce persecuting and calumnious.
But this is not my whole, or my ul-
timate purpose. I do conscientiously
and sincerely believe, that the Order of
Freemasonry if not the greatest, is one
of the greatest moral and political evils
under which this Union is now labour-
ing. I further believe that the primary
and efficient cause of all this evil, is
that same rite of Initiation; for, as all
the oaths, obligations and penalties of
the subsequent degrees, are but varia-
tions, expansions, and aggravations of
that primitive vice; let that be once
abolished, and all the rest must fall with
it; knock away the under pinning, and
the whole scaffolding must come to the
ground. -
With this Address, I have the ho-
nour of submitting to you a pamphlet
containing four letters on the Entered
•Apprentice’s Oath. You will perceive,
sir, that they arraign that act of Initia-
tion upon five district charges—as con-
trary to the laws of religion, to the
laws of morality, to the laws of the
land. -
Those letters have been now mor
than six months published. Their ex-
istence has not been noticed by any of
the newspapers of the country under
masonic influence; but they have been
very extensively circulated in pam-
phlets, and numerous editions of them
have been issued in several of the states
of the Union. They have of course at-
tracted much of that benevolence and
charity, in the construction of motives
for which the Masonic order is so con-
spicuous, upon the head of their author;
but no attempt has to my knowledge
been made to answer them. They
were first published in the Commercial
Advertiser of New York, and address-
ed to its Editor, Colonel William L.
Stone, known to you as a distinguished
companion of your Order, in the de-
gree of a Knight Templar.
I have expected that some show of
defence against the charges in those let-
ters would have been made. The
charges are grave—they are made un-
der the responsibility of my name.—
And now sir, as no individual brother
or companion of the craft has been wil-
ling to undertake its defence, I call
upon you, as the General Grand High
Priest of the Order in these United
States, to undertake it. I call upon you
the more freely, because, if the charges
are true, there is a debt of justice and
of reparation due from you to all the
Antimasons of the United States. The
charges are in part the same with those
which you have pronounced absurd,
calumnious, and persecution. If, upon
examination, you find them TRUE, I
expect from your candour and acknow-
ledgment of your error—from your
magnanimity, a retraction of your
charges against the Antimasons. -
I expect more. If upon a fair ex-
amination of these charges against the
Entered Apprentice’s Oath, Obliga-
£ion, and Penalty, you should find
yourself unable to defend them before
the tribunal of public opinion—if you
should, by the natural rectitude and in-
telligence of your enlightened and un-
prejudiced mind, come to the conclu-
sion that the first initiatory rite of Free-
masonry is in its own nature vicious,
immoral and unlawful—that no mental
reservation can excuse it—that no ex-
planation can change its nature—that
no plea of nullity can purify the attain-
der of its bloody purport—then sir, I
expect that, as the General Grand High
Priest of the Order, you will imme-
diately advise its abolition, or at least
recommend that it should never more
be administered. I ask not merely of
the Grand High Priest of Masonry,
but of the profound and eloquent and
humane legislator of the criminal code
of Louisiana; I ask of him the abolition
for ever of that brutal penalty of death
by torture and mutilation, for the dis-
closure of senseless secrets—or rather,
now, of secrets proclaimed from every
housetop of the land. I say to you in
the language of the Roman orator, in
the sentiment of a heart congenial with
your own—“hanc domesticam crude:
iitatem tolitte excivitate; hanc patino-
lite diutus in hac republica versari: que
non modo id habet in se mali, quod
civem atrocissime sustu lit, verum etiam
hominibus lenissemis ademit miscricor-
diam. Nam cum omnibus horis aliquid
atrociter fieri videmus, aut audimus;
etiam qui natura mitissimi sumus, assi-
duitate molestiarum sensum omnem hu-
maitatis ex animis amittimus.”
[*Expel this domestic cruelty from the State;
I propose to address you upon this
subject again. There is in the pamphlet
herewith enclosed, a fifth letter ad-
dressed to Benjamin Cowell, Rhode
Island, containing my opinion in fa-
vour, to a certain extent, of what has
been called political Antimasonry.—
As this principle has had, and must
continue to have, a powerful influ-
ence upon the policy and upon the
history of this Union, it will not
be unworthy of your consideration
in your other capacity of Secretary
of State of these United States. I shall
endeavour to prove to your conviction
that your exhortation to the brethren
and companions of your order through-
out the Union, but under your ſuris-
diction, not to be tempted by the slight
est interferenee in political parties,
has been and must be unavailing and
nugatory—that so long as you adhere
to the administration of the Entered
Apprentice's oath, your Lodges and
Chapters must and will be political cau-
cuses, and that Masonry will be the
signal for political proscription to one
party, as Antimasonry has been and
will be to the other. - -
I am, very respectfully, sir, your
fellow citizen, -
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Washington, April 10, 1833.
MR. HALLETT: The enclosed se-
cond letter to Mr. Livingston, Grand
High Priest of the General Grand
Royal Arch Chapter of the United
States, and Secretary of State of the
said States, was transmitted from Phi-
ladelphia to the Editors of the National
Intelligencer for publication. It was
returned by them to the writer, with
do not suffer that longer to existin this republic,
which not only is so pregnant with evil, that it
has destroyed the life of a citizen in a most atro-
cious manner, but also, has extinguished com-
passion in men the most merciful.
we accustom ourselves at all times, to see or
hear any thing done with cruelty, we who are
the most mild by nature, lose all sense of hu-
manity by the frequent occurrence of the evil.]
For, when
wº
the following letter, assigning their
reasons for “ dignified silence.”
The letters to Mr. Livingston, are
to the Secretary of State of the United
States as well as to the Grand High
Priest of the General Grand Royal
Arch Chapter. The union of the two
offices in the same person is no incon-
siderable illustration of the disclaimer
of all politics in Masonry.
As the Boston Advocate is neither
politically nor Masonically under the
jurisdiction of the Grand High Priest,
I ask a place for this letter to Mr. Li-
vingston in its columns—and am, re-
spectfully, your fellow citizen,
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Quincy, April 24th, 1833.
Office of the National hº
April 18, 1833.
RESPECTED SIR: In publishing your
letter to Mr. Livingston, concerning
the Institution of Freemasonry, we de-
parted from one rule by which we are
governed in the conduct of the Nation-
al Intelligencer, in obedience to ano-
ther, which is paramount to all others
—the rule of equal justice. We con-
sider that rule, however, to have been
satisfied by the insertion of your first
letter. We therefore return you the
manuscript of the second letter, for-
warded for insertion, regretting that
we feel obliged to do so, but consoled
by the reflection that there are other
journals of the most respectable order
of publishers of which, having already
engaged in this controversy, will be
glad to be instrumental in giving it to
the public.
With the highest respect, we are
Your faithful servants,
G-ALES & SEATON.
HoN. JoHN QUINCY ADAMs.
J., ETTER II.
To EDwARD LIVINGSTON,
Grand High Priest of the General
Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the
United States, and Secretary of
State of the said States.
SIR: In a former letter I stated to
you the motives and purposes by which
I was induced to address you, as the
presiding officer of the Masonic Order
in the United States, through the me-
dium of the press. There were,
1. To defend the Antimasons of the
United States from severe and unjust
imputations and charges against them,
preferred by you in your address to
the Brethren and Companions of the
society upon your installation in your
high Masonic dignity.
2. To make, distinctly, specifically,
and under the responsibility of my
name, the charge against the Institu-
tion of Freemasonry, which you in
that address had pronounced a vile and
absurd calumny, instigated by a spirit
of persecution, unjustifiable as arbitra-
ry imprisonment or the tortures of the
inquisition; namely, that “the cause
of offence,” that is, the murder of Wil-
liam Morgan, and of a multitude of
other crimes, connected with it, was a
secret tenet of the masonic fraternity;
consisting in the Entered Apprentice's
Oath, Obligation and Penalty——the first
rite of initiation in the Masonic order.
3. To transmit to you four letters
upon that Entered Apprentice’s Oath,
Obligation and Penalty, published by
me in November, and intended to
prove that this first rite of initiation to
the order of Freemasonry, as in its
naked nature divested of mental reser-
vation, stripped of the authority of
great names, and disarmed of the shield
of fraudulent explanation, VICIOUs, con-
trary to the laws of God, to the laws
of humanity, to the laws of the land.
4. To call upon you as the head and
chief of the whole masonic brotherhood
of the United States, to sustain your
charges against the Antimasons—to
vindicate the purity, the humanity, the
lawfulness of the Entered Apprentice’s
Oath, obligation and penalty—or to ad-
vise and recommend to the companions
and brethren under your jurisdiction—
... ITS ABOLITION.
This last, sir, was my principal and
ultimate object in addressing you. The
abolition of that disgraceful initiatory
act, which constitutes the vital essence
of Freemasonry.
I intended, and intend no disrespect
to you. Admiring your talents, con-
curring in many of our political opi-
nions, and believing that in the dis-
charge of your official duties in the ser-
vice of the one, confederated North
American people, you have at a criti-
cal moment of their union, contributed
much to its preservation, by dashing
from their lips the deadly but Circacean
cup of Nullification and Secession, my
confidence in your character has been
strengthened. Giving you the credit
of bold resistance to dangerous political
errors, and of intrepidity in the ho-
nourable undertaking of redeeming
others from the same, I have been en-
couraged to hope that you will discern
the pure and well deserved honour
which will assuredly await your name
in after ages, if you shall avail yourself
of that summit of Masonic dignity
which you have attained, by prevailing
upon the whole association to discard
for ever the use and administration of
the horrible invocations of the name of
a merciful God, as the witness to pro-
mises of secrecy to things no longer
secret to any one, under penalties of
death in every variety of forms which
a fury could devise, or a demon could
3C OnSU m mate.
One of those Oaths—that of the
Royal Arch Companion, it is your spe-
cial province, as the Grand High Priest
of the Order, to administer to every
Most Excellent Master, who not satis-
fied with this superlative excellence,
still pushes forward in search of more
light—it is the seventh of that series of
blasphemies, or of calls upon the name
of God in vain, by which the Masonic
aspirant purchases the floods of light
which pour upon him from every suc-
cessive degree. It is in this degree
that you turn that scene of awful so-
lemnity, the calling of Moses by God
himself in the burning bush, into a
theatrical representation, and actually
make your candidate take off his shoes,
declaring the place on which he stands
to be holy ground. This representa-
tion I know is emblematical, and is ex-
plained by you to your candidate, so
to be. The solemnities of admission
to the Royal Arch, are deeply impres-
sive, and therefore the more exception-
able by their mixture in the same ce-
remonies with childish fables, and gross
impostures. You commence with a
fervent prayer to God, you open the
Royal Arch Chapter, and read to the
three candidates for adnission, (for so
many you must have,) a great part of
the 138th Psalm. You interrogate
them, and bid them travel three suc-
cessive times—and on their return you
read portions of the 141st, 142d, and
143d Psalms. You then order them to
be conducted to the altar, and there
you administer to them the Royal Arch
Oath. This is the Oath, which in
many of the Chapters of the state of
New York, pledges the candidate to con-
ceal the secrets of a Royal Arch Com-
panion, communicated to him as such
—murder and treason not excepted.
It pledges him also to assist a brother
companion to extricate him from his
difficulties, whether he be right or
wrong. In other Chapters the engage-
ments are less onerous. They vary in
almost every chapter. In an authentic
copy of the manuscripts mentioned by
Col. Stone in his letters on Masonry
and Antimasonry, one of the promises
of this degree is to support, protect
and defend a Royal Arch Mason, even
with the sword, if necessity requires.
But in whatever form the oath is ad-
ministered, its promises, whether more
or less comprehensive or exceptiona-
ble, are all made with invocation of
the name of God; and all under no less
penalty than to have the swearer’s
scull smitten off and his brains exposed
to the scorching heat of the sun. This,
sir, is the penalty under which you
require of the candidate for the Royal
Arch degree to swear that he will
keep all the secrets of the order and of
its companions and brethren, and that
he will perform the other obligations
appertaining to that degree. You dé-
liberately pronounce word by word,
causing the candidate to repeat them
after you, the words of this oath, pro-
mise and penalty, closing with the ad-
juration so help me God, and keep me
steadfast to this my oath of a Royal
Arch Mason. And before he can be
qualified to take upon himself this ob-
ligation, he must have had six similar
oaths administered to him, and have
pledged himself to them, so help him
God, under no less penalty than,
1. To have his throat cut across from
ear to ear, his tongue torn out by the
roots and buried (his tongue or his
body) buried in the rough sands of the
sea, where the tide ebbs and flows
twice in twenty-four hours.
9. To have his left side cut open,
his heart torn out by the roots, and cast
away to be devoured by vultures.
3. To have his body severed in two
by the midst, his bowels burnt to ashes
and scattered to the winds.
The three succeeding penalties are
of the same character, equally cruel
and inhuman.
All these penalties William Morgan
had incurred by writing the secrets and
mysteries of the Craft for publication.
If it were possible to concentrate upon
one human being for the torture of
them all, the agonies of that mortal
would not be more prolonged, or more
excruciating than was the punishment
inflicted upon William Morgan. He
was seized by Masonic Ruſſians at
noonday, hurried away from a depen-
dent wife and infant children, by a
warrant upon a false charge of larceny,
taken out at thirty miles distant from
his abode—taken out upon the day hal-
lowed to the worship of God; he was
carried into another country, and dis-
charged as innocent, the moment he
was brought to trial. Then forthwith
arrested again for a debt of two dollars,
imprisoned for two days, though he of
fered his coat in payment of the debt;
finally discharged again in the dark-
ness of night, by an impostor under
the guise of friendship, and immediate-
ly upon issuing from prison, seized
2
again, under cover of the night, by con-
certed signals between the man stealers
of the Lodge and of the Chapter—
gagged to stifle his cries for aid, forced
into a coach and transported, by changes
of horses and carriages prepared at
every change before hand for his re-
ception, one hundred and fifty miles,
there lodged in solitary confinement,
within the walls of an old abandoned
fortress, there detained five days and
nights, under perpetual threats of in-
stant death, subject to uninterrupted
indignity and abuse—denied the light
of heaven in his cell, denied the use
of a Bible, for which he earnestly en-
treated, and finally at dead of night
transported by four Royal Arch Com-
panions of the avenging craft, to the
wide channel of the Niagara river, and
there sunk to the bottom of that river.
Nine days were occupied in the execu-
tion of this masonic sentence. At least
three hundred worthy brethren and
companions of the order were engaged
as principles and accessaries in the
guilt of this cluster of crimes—and this,
Mr. Livingston, is “ the offence,” the
“CAUSE” of which I aver to be the
then secret tenet of the fraternity, the
oath, obligation and penalty of initia-
tion, not the mysteries of the craft.
I attribute them all to the Entered
Apprentice’s Oath, because I consider
that as the cause and parent of all the
oaths, obligations and penalties of all
the subsequent degrees. My ultimate
object in these addresses being to ob-
tain through your influence and recom-
mendation, the voluntary relinquish-
ment by the fraternity in this Union,
of these oaths and penalties, I have
been desirous of narrowing down the
controversy to its simplest point. I
ask of you, and through you, I peti-
tion of the General Grand Royal Arch
Chapter of the United States, to abo-
lish the Royal Arch oath and penalty
—to require of all the Chapters under
your jurisdiction to cease from admi-
nistering that and all other oaths taint-
ed with the penalty of death, forever;
and this I trust and believe will induce
1()
the lodges to follow the example of the
Chapters, and abolish their oaths and
penalties too, for ever.
And when I charge the Entered
Apprentice’s Oath, as the cause of the
offence—that is of the kidnapping and
murder of William Morgan, I only
meet and repel your charge against the
Antimasons, as persecutors and calum-
niators of your fraternity, because they
impute that offence to that cause. But
this is not all the offence of which I
impeach the Masonic penalties as the
cause. The abduction and murder of
Morgan are but two of a multitude of
crimes, connected with that series of
transactions of which they formed a
part, all of which I impute to the same
cause. There were crimes committed
against Morgan before his abduction
and murder—crimes of equal atrocity
committed against his associate, Miller
—crimes committed after the murder
of Morgan, to shield, and screen, and
protect, and aid, and abet, its perpetra-
tors—crimes committed by masonic
Sheriffs in returning Juries—crimes
committed by masonic witnesses, some
in standing obstinately mute, and others
in refusing to give the testimony re-
quired of them by the laws of the land
—crimes committed by Masonic Ju-
rors in returning false, or in refusing
to return true verdicts. All these I
charge to the same cause, and not the
least among them is a false and calum-
nious imputation upon the character
and good name of your own immedi-
ate predecessor, in the office of Gene-
ral Grand High Priest of the Grand
Royal Arch Chapter of the United
States; and then Governor of the state
of New York—an imputation which
embittered the last days of his life. It
must be known to you that one of the
principal conspirators against Morgan
gave out among his associates, to sti-
mulate their faltering courage to the
deed of horror, that he had a letter
from the General Grand High Priest
declaring that the Morgan manuscripts
mnst be suppressed, even at the cost
of blood. That such a letter, purport-
ing to be from Governor Clinton, was
exhibited, and that he, the Governor
of the state of New York, eminent and
distinguished as he had long been, was
reduced to the humiliating necessity
of directing that an action of slander
should be commenced to vindicate his
character before a judicious tribunal,
where masonic witnesses have since
been sentenced to imprisonment for
refusing to testify to the truth. To
refute this calumny upon Governor
Clinton, was one of the honourable
motives of Col. Stone, for the publi-
cation of his letters upon Masonry and
Antimasonry. He has in my judgment
done it effectually; but he has admitted
and shown that it was a calumny strict-
ly masonic——a natural and congenial
deduction from the same oaths, obliga-
tions and penalties, which sunk Mor-
gan in the waters of the Niagara.
In the address to your companions
and brethren, at your installation,
which has been the occasion of these
letters to you, it was stated that it
would be not more unjust and absurd,
to impute to the Christian Religion all
the crimes which have been committed
in its name, than it is to charge the in-
stitution of Freemasonry with the out-
rages of a few misguided and infatua-
ted members of the craft. This argu-
ment is familiar to all the defenders of
Freemasonry, and has an appearance
of plausibility; but it is fallacious. All
the crimes committed in the name and
under colour of the Christian Religion,
have been perpetrated under false or
erroncous constructions of its precepts.
There is nothing in the Christian Reli-
gion to warrant them. But whenever
and wherever those false and erroneous
constructions have been detected and
exposed, they have been exploded.
This is precisely the object of the An-
timasons at this time with regard to the
errors and views of the Masonic insti-
tution. They are to the order of Free-
masonry, what the Protestant Reform-
ers were to the Christian Religion.
Perhaps an analogy still more accurate
may present itself to your mind be-
H1
|
tween the letters of Blaise Pascal upon
the morals of the order of Jésuits, and
those which I have now the honour of
• addressing to you upon the morals of
Masonry. The tenets which in the
name of the Christian Religion have
drenched the world in blood, were
spurious; they formed no part of
the Religion itself. The tenets of the
order of Jesuits, detected and exposed
by Pascal, were not universally held
by the members of that institution—
they formed no part of the constitution
of the society, and were disclaimed by
its brightest ornaments. The order of
Jesuits was a religious community.
The whole system of their establish-
ment was founded upon the precepts
of Christ. They read the Bible as as-
siduously and with devotion as pro-
found and sincere, as animates the
Grand High Priest of the Royal Arch,
upon the admission of a triad of candi-
dates to that Masonic degree. And
yet the order of Jesuits has been abo-
lished by the Head of the Catholic
Church himself, for holding tenets and
adopting practices inconsistent with
good morals.
But the vices of the Masonic Insti-
tution are all false and erroneous con-
• structions of precepts ill understood
and susceptible of different meanings.
They are vices, inherent in the insti-
tution itself, and not corruptions foist-
ed upon it. Cruel and barbarous as
was the penalty inflicted upon Morgan,
it was no more than he had at least
seven times sworn to endure for vio-
lation of his Masonic Oaths. His mur-
derers, those of them who survive, are
still worthy brethren, and companions
of the craft. Not one of them has ever
been expelled from Lodge, Chapter or
Encampment. They have been, on
the contrary, cheered with the sympa-
thies and releived from the funds of
the Grand Lodge and Grand Chapter
of New York. You perceive then that
whatever analogy there may be be-
tween the crimes committed by the
corruptions of the Christian Religion,
and those resulting from Masonry, the
inference to be drawn from it all speak
trumpet tongued for the abolition of
the Masonic Oaths and Penalties,
In concluding this letter, I am bound
to make my acknowledgments, for a
poetical parody of its predecessor
which I have seen in the newspaper
called the Globe, and by which I see
that you are disposed to treat the sub-
ject with pleasantry. Well, sir, so be
it. The Globe is generally considered
as your PoliticAL organ. In that
country which it is said you are about ,
to visit, you may perhaps, at your
hours of leisure and recreation, occa-
sionally frequent the first dramatic
theatre in the world, and there be en-
tertained with exhibitions, not of
Moses and the burning bush, but of
some of the masterpeices of the human
mind, in the form of Comedies of Mo-
liere. You may chance to see among
the rest, a personage upon the stage,
speaking to his servant, and about to
give him an order, when the servant
interrupts him by the inquiry, whether
he is speaking to his Coachman or to
his Cook. A similar question occurs
to me with regard to your Poet Lau-
reate. Is it one of your Charioteers of
the Department of State? or a Scullion
of the kitchen? In either event, I
commend this epistle to the inspiration
of his Muse—and as for you, sir, when
the time for seriousness shall return,
and you shall incline to justify your-
self from the charge of unjust accusa-
tion against multitudes of your fellow
citizens, or to vindicate from still more
serious charges, the Oaths, Obligations
and Penalties, which it is among your
official Masonic functions to adminis-
ter—when you shall return to the
grave and religious character of the
General Grand High Priest, I shall
hope to hear from you in verse or
prose, in the Globe or the Intelligencer,
at your option, but in your own per-
son, and with the signature of your
I} aſſle.
I am in the meantime, very respect-
fully, your fellow citizen,
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
12
LETTER III.
To Edward Livingston, Grand High
Priest of the General Grand Royal
Jīrch Chapter of the United States,
and Secretary of State of the said
United States.
SIR:—-The entered Apprentice’s
Oath, Obligation and Penalty, upon
which I undertook to animadvert, in
the four letters to Col. William L. Stone,
a copy of which was transmitted to you
with the first of these letters to yourself,
was in the terms of that obligation as
furnished by the officers of the Grand
Lodge of Rhode Island themselves, to
the Committee of the Legislature of
that State, appointed to investigate the
charges against the Institution which
had been nade since the murder of
Morgan, and which they and you pro-
nounce calumnious. The obligations
themselves had never been authenti-
cated by the authority of adhering ma-
sons, until they were produced by the
officers of the Grand Lodge and Grand
Chapter, at the peremptory requisition
of the Legislative Committee. They
were generally considered by Masons,
as constituting essential parts of the
mysteries of the Craft, and included
strictly within the promise, never to
write, print, cut, carve, paint, stain or
engrave them. In the practice of the
Chapter and Lodges, the Oaths are still
administered by route, and pass by tra-
dition alone. This is of course the
cause of the difference in the phrase-
ology of the Oaths as administered by
different persons. It is one of the great
inherent vices of the Institution. It
affords constant opportunity, and fre-
quent temptation to every Chapter and
Lodge to make additions to the pro-
mises pledged by the recipient of each
degree.
The manuscript Obligations furnished
by the Grand Chapter and Grand Lodge
of Rhode Island, were drawn up and
reduced to writing for the occasion.——
The Grand Lodge had previously pub-
lished a defence of Masonry, stoutly
denying that there was any thing in the
Masonic obligations contrary to Reli-
gion, Morals, or the Laws of the Land;
but carefully abstaining from any state-
ment of what they were. They had
used that notable device of explaining
the penalty of death for revealing the
Secrets of the Craft, or of any of its
members, as meaning only a promise
to suffer death ražher than reveal them.
They had expounded, and explained,
and denied, the several parts and par-
cels of the Masonic Obligations, till
they had made them all as innocent as
their lamskin aprons. They had espe-
cially denied with abundance of indig-
nation, that they had ever administered
or taken the oath to conceal the secrets
of a brother mason—“murder and trea-
son not excepted.” These words, or
others equivalent to them, are stated in
Elder Bernard’s Light on Masonry,
and in Avery Allyn’s Ritual, to form
a part of the Royal Arch Obligation.
They are certified as such by the con-
vention of Seceding Masons, held at
Le Roy, on the 4th of July, 1828,
twenty-three of whom had taken this
oath, and they have been since attested
by adhering Masons, upon trials before
judicial tribunals in the State of New
York. They are not in the Royal Arch
Obligation reported by the Grand Chap-
ter of Rhode Island—but in the Master
Mason's Obligation, reported by the
Grand Lodge. Among the promises of
admission to that degree are the follow-
ing words—“That I will keep a bro-
ther’s secrets as my own when com-
mitted to me in charge as such, murder
and treason excepted.” This of course,
is a pledge of immunity, for all other
crimes, but it does except murder and
treason. So said the Grand Lodge of
Rhode Island. Yet even in that State,
Nathan Whiting, an Attorney and
Counsellor at Law, who had taken the
degree in the Lodge at East Green-
wich, and had been Master of that
Lodge, testified that in the Master’s
degree, after “murder and treason ex-
cepted,” the usual form was to add
“AND THAT AT My option”—and what
the difference is between that, and
“murder and treason not excepted,” I
•
13
leave as a problem in morals for Ma-
Sonic casuists to solve.
In the seventh of Col. Stone's letters
upon Masonry, page 66, referring to
the disagreement in the phraseology of
the obligations, as given in different
places, he makes mention of a manu-
script then in his possession, containing
copies of the obligations of the several
degrees, as they were given twenty
years before in the Lodge and Chapter
of an Eastern city—copied from the
manuscript of a distinguished gentle-
man, who had been master of the Lodge
and High Priest of the Chapter. The
forms, say Col. Stone, are the same
that were used in that city for a long
series of years, and when Royal Arch
Masonry was introduced into Roches-
ter in the State of New York, these
Jorms, from these identical papers,
were then and there introduced and
adopted.
There is at this passage a reference
to a note in the Appendix, stating it to
have been the original intention of Col.
Stone to insert all the obligations con-
tained in that manuscript in his text;
but that he was compelled to suppress
them from the unforeseen extent of his
work. He observes that neither of the
obligations in the first three degrees, in
those manuscripts, is more than half as
long as those disclosed by Morgan, and
in common use. He further adds that
these manuscripts give a more sensible
and intelligible, and a less exception-
able account of the seven degrees of
Masonry, than any other work he had
seen—and he concludes by observing
that when J.Morgan was at Rochester,
these papers were there, and already
written to his hands.
It is to be regretted that Col. Stone
did not adhere to his first intention of
publishing these obligations, or rather
that he did not issue the whole manu-
script in his Appendix. I have obtained
it from him, and annex hereto the
three obligations, as there recorded, of
the Entered Apprentice, the Fellow
Craft, and the Master Mason. It will
be found, upon examination, that al-
though truly represented by him as
perhaps not more than half so long as
the same obligations in Morgan’s and
Bernard’s books, they lose nothing of
pith and moment by the retrenchment
of words. They were the forms used
at Rochester, and no other masonic in-
stitution in the State was more deeply
implicated in the tragedy of Morgan’s
kidnapping and murder than that same
Chapter at Rochester. Now in the
Entered Apprentice’s Oath of this ma-
nuscript, the promise is expressly and
explicitly to keep and conceal the se-
crets of Masons as well as Masonry.—
The penalty is the same as that report-
ed by the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island,
but in the lecture to the candidate on
his admission there is in the manu-
script an earplanation of the meaning
of the penalty, which not only utterly
falsifies the explanation of the Rhode
Island masons, so strangely accepted
and countenanced by the majority re-
port of the Legislative investigating
committee, but proves that the mur-
derers of Morgan understood but too
well the real character of the obliga-
tion. - . -
In this Entered Apprentice’s Lec-
ture, the candidate, after going through
the forms of admission, is examined by
the Master, upon interrogatories with
regard to the meaning of all the cere-
monies through which he has passed.
Upon giving an account of his admis-
sion at the door, the following, word
for word, are the questions put to him
by the Master, and his answers:
Q. “What did you next hear?” A.
“One from within, saying with an au-
dible voice, let him enter.” Q. “How
did you enter!” A. “Upon the point
of a sword, spear, or other warlike in-
strument, presented to my naked left
breast, accompanied with this expres-
sion—Do you feel?” Q. “Your an-
swer?” A. “I do.” Q. “What was
next said?” A. “Let this be a prick
to your conscience, a shield to your
faith, AND INSTANT DEATH IN CASE
You REvolT.”
Yes, Sir, this is the explanation given
14
to the Entered Apprentice, at the time
of his admission to the degrees of the
penalty, under which he binds himself
by his oath—this was the formula used
in Connecticut more than twenty-five
years since, and thence introduced into
Rochester, in the State of New York.
Who shall say that the murderers of
Morgan misunderstood the import of
the Entered Apprentice’s Obligation?
And in this manuscript of the forms
of admission used at Rochester, the fol-
lowing, word for word, are clauses of
the Master Mason's Obligation?
“I furthermore promise and swear,
that I will attend a brother barefoot, if
necessity requires, to warn him of ap-
proaching danger; that on my knees I
will remember him in my prayers;
that I will take him by the right hand
and support him with the left, in all his
just and lawful undertakings; that I will
keep his secrets as safely deposited in
my breast, as they are in his own, trea-
son and murder only earcepted, AND
THose AT My opTION;-that I will obey
all true signs, tokens and summonses,
sent me by hand of a Master Mason, or
from the door of a just and regular
Master Mason's lodge, if within the
length of my cable-tow.
This was the form of admission to
the Master Mason’s degree, at Roches-
ter, when the Chapter at Rochester de-
cided that Morgan had incurred the
penalties of his obligations, and sent
out their signs, tokens and summonses
accordingly.
These were the oaths which every
Master Mason admitted at the Lodge
in Rochester had taken. All this he
had “most solemnly and sincerely pro-
mised and sworn with a full and hearty
resolution to perform thc same without
any evasion, equivocation or mental
reservation—under no less penalty than
to have his body cut across, his bowels
taken out and burned to ashes, and
those ashes scattered to the four winds
of heaven; to have his body dissected
into four equal parts; and those parts
hung on the cardinal points of the com-
pass, there to hang and remain as a ter-
ror to all those who shall presume to
violate the sacred obligations of a Mas-
ter Mason.”
Col. Stone, in his seventh letter, p.
67, says—That in his apprehension the
words “and they left to my own elec-
tion” are an innovation, and that he
has not been accustomed to hear the
obligation so conferred. The words in
his own manuscript are, “and those at
my option,” fewer words, but bearing
the same meaning. They were no in-
novation at Rochester. The only words
in this obligation which need any ex-
planation are the words CABLE-Tow,
and they are always so explained as to
give them adequate meaning. The rest
are all as explicit as language can make
them, and they are taken with a broad
and total disclaimer of all evasion, equi-
vocation or mental reservation. So they
were taken at Rochester, and so they
are recorded in the old manuscript of
Col. Stone.
You are a classical scholar, sir, and
you doubtless remember the humour-
ous remark of Cicero, in his dialogue
on the nature of the gods. That he
could not conceive how one Roman
Harunex could look another in the face
without laughing. I find it equally dif-
ficult to conceive how you, performing
the functions of a Master of a Lodge,
as among the duties of a Grand High
Priest yoti may be required to do—how
you can look in the face of a man after
administering to him such an oath as
this, without shuddering. But we have
not yet done with the old manuscript
of Col. Stone,
After the ceremonies of admission to
the degree of Master Mason are com-
pleted, and the recipient has been in-
vested in his new dignity, he is con-
ducted to the Master of the Lodge in
the East, there to hear from him the
history of the Degree. There, sir, with
equal regard for historical truth, and
reverence for the Holy Scriptures, you
mingle up the building of Solomon’s
Temple as recorded in the Bible, with
the murder of Hiram Abiff by three
Tyrian Fellow Craft, Jubela, Jubelo
\
15
and Jubelum, as preserved in the Chro-
nicles of Masonic Mystery. You relate
them all as solemn truth of equal au-
thenticity, and in the manuscript now
before me, the story goes that after the
murder of Hiram Abiff was corrsum-
mated, King Solomon was informed of
the conspiracy and ordered the roll to
be called, when the three ruffians were
missing. Search “was made after them
and they were found by their dolorous
moans in a cave. O, said Jubela, that
my throat had been cut across, &c.
[repeating the whole penalty of the
Entered Apprentice’s obligation] before
I had been accessary to the death of so
good a Master. O, said Jubelo, that
my heart had been torn out, &c. [re-
peating the whole penalty of the Fellow
Craft’s obligation] before I had been
accessary to the death of our Master.
O, said Jubelum, that my body were
cut across, my bowels taken out and
burnt to ashes, &c. [repeating the whole
penalty of the Master Mason’s obliga-
tion] before 1 had been the death of our
Master Hiram Abiff. They were then
taken, and sent to Hiram, King of Tyre,
who executed on them the several sen-
tences they had invoked upon them-
selves,” which HAve EveR SINCE RE-
MAINED “THE STANDING SPEN ALTIES
IN THE THREE FIRST DEGREES OF MA-
son Ry.”
This, sir, is the history of the Master
Mason’s degrees which was delivered
by the Master of the Lodge at Roches-
ter, to every individual received as a
Master Mason. This was the explana-
tion given to him of the obligation as-
sumed by him, immediately after the
administration of the oath. This is in
substance the explanation which you,
the Reporter of a criminal code to the
Legislature of Louisiana, must give to
every Master Mason whom you receive,
of the penalty of the oath which you
administer to him in the name of the
ever living God—without evasion—
without equivocation—without mental
reservation.
And will you say, sir, as the Grand
Lodge of Rhode Island have said, that
these penalties mean nothing more than
that the swearer, who invokes them
upon himself, will rather die like Hi-
ram Abiff, than reveal the secrets of
Masonry? Is it Hiram Abiff in this
story who pays the penalty of violated
vows? Is it Hiram Abiff who invokes
these penalties upon himself? The
Entered Apprentice, the Fellow Craft,
and the Master Mason invoke upon
themselves the penalties of their re-
spective degrees. The Entered Ap-
prentice is told that he enters the Lodge
on the point of a naked sword pricking
his breast to remind him of INSTANT
DEATH IN CASE OF REvoDT; and the Mas-
ter Mason is told that the penalties eace-
cuted upon Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum,
have ever since remained the standing
penalties of the three first degrees of
Masonry.
And now, sir, what are we to think
of High Priests, and Royal Arch Chap-
ters, and Grand Masters, and Grand
Lodges, who after taking and adminis-
tering in secret these oaths, with these
penalties, for a long series of years,
when their real character has been pro-
claimed by the voice of midnight mur-
der from the waters of Niagara in tones
to which the thunders of her cataract
are but a whisper—when their une-
quivocal import has been divulged, to
the amazement and disgust and horror
of all pure, unsophisticated minds; what
are we to think of High Priests, and
Grand Kings, and most illustrious
Knights of the Cross, who face it out
in defiance of the common sense and
common feeling of mankind, that there
is nothing in these oaths and penalties
inconsistent with the duties of those
who take and administer them to their
country or their God? The manuscript
from which I now give to the world
the three obligations of the Entered
Apprentices of the Fellow Craft, and
of the Master Masons, is upon the tes-
timony of Col. Stone, a Knight Templar
and a man of unimpeachable integrity,
masonry in its most mitigated and
least eacceptionable form—it was the
masonry of Connecticut more than
I6
twenty-five years since and for many
years before—it was the masonry of
Rochester at the time of the murder of
Morgan.
I have yet more to say to you, sir,
on this subject, nor shall I be discour-
aged from continuing to address you
upon it by your observance of a “ dig-
nified silence.” If my letters are not
read by you, there are those by whom
they will be read, I trust, not without
effect. If the presses under your juris-
diction, masonic or political, refuse
their columns to the discussion of ma-
sonic morals, when the Grand High
Priest of masonry is the Secretary of
State of the Union, it may serve to il-
lustrate the subserviency of the peri-
odical press to masonry—but your ad-
dress to your companions and brethren
at your installation as the Grand High
Priest of the Royal Arch of this Union,
is not the perishable effusion of a day.
It is a state paper for history, and for
biography—for the present age and for
the next—it shall not be lost to pos-
terity—it shall stand as a beacon to fu-
ture time—the admiration, or at least
the wonder of other generations.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Quincy, May 1, 1833.
A.A.) TTER IV.
To Edward Livingston, Grand High
Priest of the General Grand Royal
JArch Chapter of the United States,
and Secretary of State of the said
States.
Sir—The position which I have un-
dertaken to prove, beyond all possibi-
lity of rational denial is, that the “cause
of the offence”—that is of the murder
of William Morgan, and of a multi-
tude of other crimes associated with
and subsequent to that act, was the oath
of initiation to the masonic institution,
with its appended penalty.
Had Morgan never taken any other
oath than that of the entered appren-
tice, he would, after writing his illus-
trations of masonry, have been liable to
the penalty which he suffered—even
before they should be published. Like
Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum, he had in-
voked the penalty upon himself; he
suffered nothing more than the penalty
which he had heen assured had been
executed upon them, nothing more than
what he had been warned had been the
standing penalties of Free-masonry
from the time of the building of the
Temple.
All the obligations are assumed, with
invocation of the penalty of death,
upon him who takes the oath of admis-
sion to each of the several degrees;
pronounced with his own lips, and with
a solemn appeal to God, disclaiming all
evasions, all equivocations, all mental
reservation.
Such is the law of masonry.
Shall I cite to you, sir, from your
able and eloquent Report to the Legis-
lature of Louisiana, the powerful ar-
gument against the infliction of death
upon any criminal for the commission
of any crime whatsover. The whole
argument is well worthy to be read
and studied, by every person conver-
sant with the administration or enact-
ment of criminal law, and of the deep
consideration, especially of the brethern
and companions of the craft. But the
introduction to it is so peculiarly ap-
propriate to the purpose of these ad-
dresses to you, that I take the liberty
of presenting it to you in your own
words.
“I approached the inquiry into the
nature and effect of this punishment (of
death) with the awe, becoming a man
who felt most deeply his liability to
err, and the necessity of forming a
correct opinion on a point so interest-
ing to the justice of the country, the
life of its citizens, and the character of
its laws. I strove to clear my under-
standing from all prejudices which
education or early impressions might
have created, and to produce a frame
of mind fittest for the investigation of
truth and the impartial examination of
the arguments on this great question.
For this purpose, I not only consulted
17
such writers on the subject as were
within my reach, but endeavoured to
procure a knowledge of the practical
effect of this punishment on different
crimes in the several countries where it
is inflicted. In my situation, however,
I could draw but a limited advantage
from either of these sources; very few
books on penal law, even those most
commonly referred to, are to be found
in the scanty collections of this place,
and my failure in procuring information
from the other states, is more to be re-
gretted on this than any other topic on
which it was requested. With these in-
adequate means, but after the best use that
my faculties would make of them; aſter
long reflection, and not until I had can-
vassed every argument that could sug-
gest itself to my mind, I came to the
conclusion, THAT THE PUNISHMENT of
DEATH SHOULD FIND NO PLACE IN THE
CODE WHICH YOU HAVE DIRECTED ME
To PRESENT.'”
Now, sir, I ask of you, as the Grand
High Priest of the General Grand Royal
Arch Chapter of the United States, to
make to the Chapters and Lodges, to
the companions and brethern under
your jurisdiction, that some recommen-
dation to abolish the penalty of death,
which, with such deep and affecting so-
lemnity you did make in reporting a
code of criminal law, to the Legislature
of Louisiana. The argument of which
I have here given only the introductory
paragraph, embraces a very large por-
tion, nearly one half, of your Report
on the criminal code. In the system
reported with it, murder, and joining
an insurrection of slaves, is made pu-
nishable with hard labour for life. At
the close of this letter I annex several
other extracts as well from the Report
as from the preamble to the penal code
reported with it, indicative not only of
your deliberate and solemn opinions,
adverse to the punishment of death in
all cases whatsoever, but of the abhor-
rence which you must feel at heart, for
those brutal mutilations of the body,
which constitute the penalties of every
masonic obligation.
3
It is not, Mr. Livington, for the
poor purpose of bringing against you a
charge of inconsistency before the tri-
bunal of public opinion, that I address
these letters to you, and call earnestly
upon you to make this recommendation.
I would, if possible, speak to your heart.
I would say, you have recommended,
you have urged by appeals to the best
feelings of our nature, to the supreme
legislative authority of your state, the
total abolition of the penalty of death
—the reformation of every thing cruel,
indecorous or vindictive in her code of
criminal law. You are at the head in
these United States of a private asso-
ciation of immense power, co-exten-
sive with the civilized world—knit to-
gether by ties of strong prevailment
even when secret, scarcely less effica-
cious when divulged. When secret,
they were rivetted by pledges to the
penalty of death and mutilation in
a multitude of forms, given in the name
of God, and varnished with an impos-
ture of sanctity, by being mingled up
with the most solemn testimonials of
holy writ. Even now, when your se-
crets are divulged; when your obliga-
tions and penalties have been exposed
in their naked and undeniable nature,
when you dare not attempt to vindi-
cate or defend them, when the attempts
of your brethern to explain them have
been proved fraudulent and delusive,
when your only resources of apology
for using them is that they are null and
void, words utterly without meaning,
yet you still persevere in adhering to
them as the ancient landmarks of the
order. Ask yourself, sir, not whether
this is consistent with your report and
criminal code for Louisiana; but whe-
ther it is worthy of your character—of
your stand in the face of your country
and mankind—of your reputation in
after time—and if it is not and cannot
be, why should you not take the occa-
sion of the high dignity which in this
association you have attained, to pro-
pose and to promote its reformation ?
To divest it of that, which, so long as
it continues can never cease to shed
18
disgrace upon the whole order; of that
which cannot even be repeated without
shame.
You have taken no public notice of
these letters in your own name, nor
have I been particularly solicitous that
you should. Had you ventured to as-
sume the defence of the masonic oaths,
obligations and penalties—had you pre-
sumed to commit your name to the as-
sertion that they can by any possibility
be reconciled to the laws of morality,
of christianity, or of the land, I should
have deemed it my duty to reply; and
to have completed the demonstration
before God and man that they cannot.
Of the multitude of defences of masonry,
which have been obtruded upon the
public since this controversy arose, not
one has dared to look these obligations
in the face, and assert their innocence.
Abuse upon the Antimasons for de-
nouncing them—impudent denials of
their import, so long as a remnant of
the ragged veil of secrecy rent by the
seceders, could yet be drawn over their
nakedness—false and fraudulent earpla-
nations of their meaning when disclos-
ed beyond all possibility of denial, and
mystical and mystified declarations of
inflexible adherence to them under the
name of the ancient landmarks of the
institution—these have been the last
resources, the forlorn hops of the Ma-
sonic obligations.
And this inflexible adherence to
those ancient landmarks, is again re-
commended to the Chapters and Lodges
under your jurisdiction by the General
Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the
United States, of which you are the
High Priest at their triennial meeting
in Baltimore last November. At that
meeting you were re-elected to the dig-
nity which you had held from the time
of your address to the companions and
brethern of the Order of your Instal-
lation in April, 1830. A letter from
you was read at that meeting apoligiz-
ing for your absence from it, and per-
haps for the better accommodation of
the Grand High Priest, that meeting
was adjourned to be held again in No-
...--
vember, 1835, at the City of Wash-
ington.
There is a point of view in which I
believe this subject to be deeply inte-
resting to the people of this Union,
upon which I have hitherto said no-
thing, and upon which I do not wish to
enlarge. The President of the United
States is a brother of the craft, bound
by its oaths, obligations and penalties,
to the exclusive favours, be they more
or less, of which they give the mutual
pledge. That in the troubles and dif-
ficulties which within the last seven
years have befallen the craft, they have
availed themselves of his name, and
authority, and influence, to sustain their
drooping fortune, as far as has been in
their power, has been matter of public
notoriety. A sense of propriety has
restrained him from joining in their
processions, as he has been importu-
nately urged by invitations to do, but
he has not withheld from them his
support. It is not my intention to
comment upon the operation of the ma-
sonic obligations, upon the two most
recent elections to the Presidency of
the United States, or upon the official
conduct of the President himself in re-
lation to the institution or its members.
But whoever will impartially reflect
upon the import of the masonic obli-
gations, and upon the public history
of the United States for the last ten
years, must come to the conclusion,
that no President of the United States
ought ever to be shackled by such obli-
gations, or under the self assumed bur-
den of such penalties. They establish
between him and all the members of
the institution, and between him and
the institution itself, relations not only
different from, but utterly incompatible
with those in which his station places
him with the whole community. That
the President of the United States is
not at this moment an impartial person
in the question between Masonry and
Antimasonry, nor between Masons
and Anti-masons, has been fully au-
thenticated, by something more than
the effusions of your scullion in the
19
Globe. He is not impartial. How can
he be impartial after trammelling him-
Self promises, such as those which are
now unequivocally authenticated before
the world.”
And you, Mr. Livingston, Secretary
of State of the United States, are at the
same time Grand High Priest of the
General Grand Royal Arch Chapter of
the United States; and all the Royal
Arch Chapters of all the States of this
Union are under the jurisdiction of
that over which you preside. Are you
impartial to the question between Ma-
sonry and Antimasonry P Are you,
or can you be impartial in any question
which can arise between Masons and
Anti-masons P You commenced your
official duties as Grand High Priest, by
a sweeping denunciation of all the Anti-
masons in the Union. The Anti-ma-
sons were then a great political party.
They are still. You brought against
them, what I have proved to be a most
unjust accusation. Are you impartial
between them and their adversaries 2
Has human nature changed its proper-
ties, since one of them was by a pro-
found observer said to be, to hate those
whom you have injured, “odisse quem
laeseris P” How far distant from such
a denunciation of Antimasonry as that
with which you gratified your com-
panions and brethern at your installa-
tion, is the dismission for Anti-masonry
of an officer of the United States, de-
pendent upon you for his place 2 Is it
as far as the Department of State from
the General Post Office P In all the
trials before the Judicial Courts of the
State of New York, to which the ab-
duction and murder of Morgan has
given rise, the efficacy of the Masonic
obligations upon Sheriffs, jurors and
witnesses to warn them from their duty
to their country has been lamentably
proved—what security can the country
possess that they will not operate in
the same manner upon a Secretary of
State, or a Pre3ident of the United
States? Were the Masonic obligations
equivocal in their character, were they
even susceptible of the explanations
which have been attempted to be given
of them, the undeniable fact, that they
have been understood and acted upon
according to their literal import, by
great multitudes of Masons, to the total
prostration of their duties to the laws
of their country, would be conclusive
reason for abolishing them altogether.
For if the obligations are of a nature to
be differently understood by different
persons, their consistency or inconsis-
tency with the laws of the land, must
depend upon the individual characters
of those who have assumed them. Bound
by the same oaths, some of the wit-
nesses and jurors on the Masonic trial
in New York have given their testi-
mony and true verdicts, while others
have obstinately refused their testimony
to facts within their knowledge, and
denied their assent to verdicts upon
the clearest proof. It has been ju-
dicially decided in the States of New
York and of Rhode Island that a person
under Masonic obligations, must be set
aside as disqualified to serve upon a
jury in cases where one of the parties
is a Mason, and the other is not.—
From the letter of his obligations he
cannot be impartial, and although some
Masons may understand them other-
wise, neither the court, nor the party
whose rights and interests are staked
upon the trial can have any assurance
that the trial will be fair. The same
uncertainty must rest upon the admi-
nistration of executive officers. If the
President of the United States, and the
Secretary of the State are bound by
solemn oaths and under horrible penal-
ties to befriend and favour one class of
individuals in the community, more
than another, the purpose for which
those offices are instituted must be frus-
trated; a privileged order is palmed
upon the community, more corrupting,
more pernicious than the titles of no-
bility which our constitutions expressly
prohibit, because its privileges are dis-
pensed and enjoined under an avowed
pledge of inviolable secrecy. In many
of the New York Chapters, the promise
to promote the political preferment of
2O
a brother of the craft, over others
equally qualified, was one of the Royal
Arch obligations to which the compan-
ion was sworn, upon the penalty of
death. How far such an obligation
would influence the official conduct of
a President of the United States, it is
impossible to say; but not more impos-
sible than for that officer to fulfil the
obligations of such a promise, and to
perform his duties with impartiality.
At the time when you delivered the
Address, upon your installation as
Grand High Priest of the General
Grand Chapter, Antimasonry had al-
ready existed upwards of three years.
It was an extensive political party, al-
though then in a great measure con-
fined within the limits of the State of
New York. You denounced it in no
measured terms. Had the charges
which you openly brought against it
been true, every individual within the
scope of your denunciation must have
been an unworthy citizen and a dis-
honest man. Such has been the tone
of all the defences and defenders of
Masonry, from that day to this. If the
Masonic obligations were understood
at all ordinary times not to interfere
with the religion or the politics of in-
dividuals, how can it be possible to pre-
serve this nominal exception when ma-
sonry itself has become the most pro-
minent object of political dissention?
As a political party the Antimasons of
the United States are, at this day, pro-
bably more numerous than the masons.
In several of the States, the most im-
portant elections turn upon that point
alone. The Antimasons openly avow
the principle of voting for no other
than Antimasonic candidates. How is
it possible for the masons to preserve
themselves from the political bias,
prompting them to repel Antimasonry?
They have in fact no such equanimity.
They never fail to bring forward a can-
didate of their own when possible; and
when they find it impracticable, they
unite with any party, whatever may be
their aversion to it, and however ob-
noxious its politics, to exclude the An-
timason.
In your letter to the General Grand
Royal Arch Chapter of the United
States, of November 1832, apologizing
to them, ſor not attending at their meet-
ing, then about to be held at Baltimore,
you said thus—You know (notwith-
standing the allegations of our enemies)
that the duties we owe to our country
are paramount to the obligations of ma-
sonry, or to the indulgence of fraternal
feelings.” Now sir, my appeal is to
the very principle here assisted by
yourself. I aver that your duty to your
country is violated by the administration
of the masonic oaths and obligations
under penalties of death, invoked in the
name of God—penalties multiplied,
beyond those of the most sanguinary
code that ever disgraced human legis-
lation, and for offences which the su-
preme law of the State cannot recognise
as the most trifling of misdemeanors.
At that triennial meeting of the Ge-
neral Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the
United States, a Committee was ap-
pointed “to take into consideration the
present situation of our (the masonic)
Institution, and recommend such things
and measures as they in their wisdom
may considerexpedient and necessary.”
The report of that Committee, and
the resolutions proposed by them, and
adopted by the General Grand Chapter
of the United States, were the imme-
diate occasion of these letters to you.
This circumstance may account in part
for what appears to have surprised some
of your friends——that I should now
hold accountable for an address deli-
vered so long since as April, 1830.-
That was your declaration of war
against the Antimasons. In November,
1832, you still proclaimed them to be
your enemies, and the General Grand
Royal Arch Chapter in full triennial
meeting repeated with renewed and
aggravated denunciations, all your er-
roneous charges against them. Upon
that report, and upon the resolutions
with which it closed, I shall in my next
letter submit to the consideration of
the public some observations.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Quincy, 23d May, 1833.
21
\
EXTRACTS
From the Report made to the General Assembly
of the State of Louisiana on the plan of a Pe-
nal Code for the said State. By Edward Liv-
ingston.
“Legislators in all ages and in every country,
have at times, endangered the lives, the liber-
ties, and fortunes of the people by inconsistent
provisions, CRUEL or DISPRoPontroNED PUNISH-
MENTs, and a legislation weak and wavering.”
“Executions [in England] for some crimes,
were attended with BUTchERY THAT woulD DIs-
GUST A SAVAGE.” -
“Acknowledged truths in politics and juris-
prudence can never be too often repeated.”
“Publicity is an object of such importance in
free governments, that it not only ought to be
permitted, but must be secured by a species of
compulsion.”
If he [the culprit] be guilty, the state has an
interest in his conviction; and whether guilty or
innocent, it has a higher interest that the fact
should be fairly canvassed before JUDGES INAc-
CESSIBLE TO INFLUENCE AND UN BIASSED EY ANY
FALSE VIEws of OFFICIAL DUTY.”
“It is not true, therefore, to say, that the laws
do enough, when they give the choice (even
supposing it could be made with deliberation)
between a fair and impartial trial and one that
is liable to the strongest objections. They must
do more, they must restrict that choice, so as
not to suffer an ill-advised individual to degrade
them into instruments of ruin, though it should
be voluntarily inflicted, or of death, though that
death should be suicide.”
“The English mangle the remains of the dead
[by suicide.] The inanimate body feels neither
the ignominy nor pains. The mind of the inno-
cent survivor alone is lacerated by THIs Us ELess
AND SAVAGE BUTchERY, and the disgrace of the
execution is felt exclusively by him, although it
ought to fall on the laws which inflict it.”
“The Law punishes, not to revenge, but to
prevent crimes. No punishments, greater than
are necessary to effect this work of prevention,
let us remember, ought to be inflicted.”
“Although the dislocation of the joints is no
longer considered as the best mode of ascertain-
ing innocence or discovering guilt; although of.
fences against the Deity are no longer expiated
by the burning faggot; or those against the ma-
jesty of kings, avenged by the hot pincers and
the rack and the wheel; still many other modes
of punishment have their advocates, which, if
not equally cruel, are quite as inconsistent with
the true maxims of penal law.”
“As to the authority of great names, it loses
much of its force, since the mass of the people
have begun to think for themselves.”
“Where laws are so directly at war with the
feelings of the people whom they govern, as
this, and many other instances prove them to
be, these laws can never be wise or operative,
AND THEY OUGHT To BE AB or ISHEI).”
º from detached parts of the projected
Code.
“No act of Legislation can be, or ought to
be immutable.”
~.
“Vengeance is unknown to the Laws. The
only object of punishment is to prevent the
commission of offences.”
“Penal laws should be written in plain lan-
guage, clearly and unequivocally expressed,
that they may neither be misunderstood nor
perverted.”
“The law should never command more than
it can enforce. Therefore, whenever, from
public opinion, or any other cause, a penal law
cannot be carried into execution, it should be
repealed.”
“The Legislature alone has a right to declare
what shall constitute an offence.”
ZETTER P.
To Edward Livingston, Grand
High Priest of the General Grand
Royal Arch Chapter of the United
States, and late Secretary of State
of the said States.
SIR: From the official published Re-
port of the proceedings of the General
Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the
United States, at their triennial meet-
ing at Baltimore last November, it ap-
pears that a communication was made
to that meeting from the M. E. Nathan
R. Haswell, G. H. P. (meaning Grand
High Priest) of the Grand Chapter of
Vermont, together with accompanying
documents, and that this communica-
tion and the accompanying documents
were referred to a committee which is
denominated one of the most important
committees then appointed, and they
were instructed to take into considera-
tion the present situation of the ma-
sonic institution, and to recommend
such things and measures as they in
their wisdom might consider it expe-
dient and necessary.
The first remark that invites atten-
tion here, is, that this meeting was
composed of individuals all belonging
to different States of this Union, some
of them occupying stations of power
and dignity in their several states. The
chairman of the committee to whom
this communication was referred, and
who made the Report upon which I
am to comment, is a member of the
Executive Council of the Common-
wealth of Massachusetts, elected from
22
a county exceedingly divided upon the
questions between masonry and anti-
masonry—elected at the same time
another was excluded from the same
office, who though an ardent national
republican, and a sufferer by proscrip-
tion from office by the present national
administration, was discarded for a
slight real or suspected trait of antima-
Sonry.
Here then is a member of the coun-
cil of the state of Massachusetts, elect-
ed expressly in opposition to the anti-
masonic party of the county of Bristol
in that state, representing the grand
royal arch chapter of Massachusetts, at
a general convention of all the royal
arch chapters of the United States, to
which is referred a communication and
documents ſrom the grand royal arch
chapter of Vermont.
That the report of a committee of
which this gentleman was the chair-
man, should be marked with strong
resentment against the antimasons of
Vermont, was to be expected. Politi-
cal antimasonry has been more success-
ful in Vermont than in the county of
Bristol in Massachusetts.
The report, therefore, states that it
appears from the appeal published by
the masons in Vermont in 1829, that
various presses had been established in
that state as vehicles of slander and
malignity against the adherents of Ma-
sonry.
This is precisely a repetition of the
language of your address at your in-
stallation in April, 1830. It is cer-
tainly not a correct representation of
facts, and it contains in itself a slan-
derous imputation of a majority of the
people of the state of Vermont.
Now, sir, for a more rational and S
accurate history of antimasonry as it
existed in the state of Vermont in the
year 1829 and 1830, I refer you to a
pamphlet entitled “Masonic Penal-
ties,” published in August, 1830, by
Wm. Slade, now a member elect of
the house of representatives of the
United States from that state.
In this pamphlet you will see that
Mr. Slade commenced the publication
of his Essays on the Masonic Penalties
on the 7th of April, 1830, a very few
days before your installation and the
delivery of your address. You have
probably never seen those Essays, for
it appears to be one of the maxims of
masonry, while denouncing as slander,
malignity and persecution, every im-
peachment of the institution, to “know
nothing about” the real serious charges
against it. It is therefore highly pro-
bable that you know nothing about
Mr. Slade’s Essays on Masonic Penal-
ties. And I take it for granted that
the committee of the general grand
royal arch chapter of the United States,
who reported this bitter denunciation
against the antimasons of Vermont,
knew no more about it than you do.
I will hazard a conjecture that among
the documents transmitted by the
grand high priest of the grand royal
arch chapter of Vermont, and upon
which the committee made their re-
port, it would be a vain search to look
for Mr. Slade’s Essays upon the Ma-
sonic Penalties—“ dignified silence”
was the rule to be observed with re-
gard to them—and yet, sir, attempts
were made to answer them. It is so
far from being true that presses were
set up in Vermont as vehicles of slan-
der and malignity against the adhe-
rents of masonry, that the editor of the
Vermont American, who began the
publication of Mr. Slade’s Essays, sus-
pended them after the 3d number,
under the terror of masonic vengeance;
and Mr. Slade was compelled to pub-
lish the remaining numbers in an extra
sheet. Yet the columns of the Ver-
mont American when closed against
Mr. Slade, were opened to the defend-
ers of masonry, and two writers under
the signatures of “Common Sense of
the Old School,” and “Senex” vainly
attempted to refute the unanswerable
arguments of his first three numbers.
Mr. Slade replied, but was obliged to
resort to the pages of a free press, one
of those defamed by the Report of the
committee of the General Grand Royal
Arch Chapter of the United States.
Mr. Slade published in a pamphlet,
23
under the responsibility of his name,
his own Essays, and those of his ad-
Versaries; and this procedure was in
the same spirit of fairness and candour,
which marked his whole management
of the controversy. I recommend to
you the serious and attentive perusal
of the pamphlet; for if it should serve
no other purpose than to preserve you
and the General Grand Royal Arch
Chapter of the United States from the
reiteration of insult and slander upon
the people of a highly respectable state
of this Union, it will have a just claim
to your grateful acknowledgments.
Insult and slander upon the people of
Vermont, who by their votes at the
last presidential election, as well as by
their suffrage at two succeeding elec-
tions for the executive and the state
legislature, have signally vindicated the
cause of Antimasonry. To this result
it is obvious that Mr. Slade’s Essays
upon the Masonic Penalties did in an
eminent degree contribute. It was
impossible that they should fail to pro-
duce their effect upon the minds of an
intelligent and virtuous people. These
Essays carry with them internal and
irresistible evidence in refutation of
the charge against the Antimasonic
presses of Vermont, proffered by the
committee of the General Grand Royal
Arch Chapter of the United States.
The Essays on the Masonic Penalties
are not less remarkable for their mode-
ration, delicacy, and tenderness to the
adherents of masonry than for the close
and pressing cogency of their argu-
ments against the institution of mason-
ry. They charge not the adherents of
masonry, but masonry itself, with the
murder of Morgan, and all its execra-
ble progeny of crimes.
The Report of the committee pro-
ceeds to state that the members of the
Grand Lodge of Vermont, and other
masons in the state, to the number of
nearly 200, published in 1829, an ap-
peal declaring that they as masons had
been charged—
1. With being accessary to the ab-
duction of Wm. Morgan.
2. With shielding masons from just
punishment for crimes they might have
committed.
3. With exercising a masonic influ-
ence over legislative, executive and
judiciary branches of the government.
4. With tampering with juries.
5. With exerting an improper influ-
ence for the political preferment of the
brotherhood.
6. With various blasphemous prac-
tices.
7. With causing the death of a dis-
tinguished mason.
8. With sanctioning principles at
variance with religion and virtue.
9. With the assumption of a power
to judge individual masons by laws
known only to the fraternity, and to
inflict punishments corporally, even
unto the pains of death. To each and
all of these charges they affirm in the
most solemn manner, that they were
entirely guiltless.
Now the error which pervades the
whole of this declaration consists in
this: that the individual masons who
volunteer this plea of not guilty, apply
gratuitously to themselves the charges
which the antimasons bring against the
institution to which they belong, and
to its initiatory obligations and so-
lemnities. The charges are against the
plain, unequivocal import of the laws
of masonry. The charges are that
those laws do in their own nature lead
to and instigate the commission of all
those crimes, and that they have led
to and instigated the perpetration of
them. Two hundred masons of Ver-
mont declare themselves guiltless of
all these charges. There are perhaps
2000 masons in the state—suppose the
200 appelants to be not guilty; that
surely no more proves the innocence
than it does the guilt of the remaining
1800. Had the masons of Vermont
been desirous of making up a real is-
sue between themselves and the Anti-
masons, they would have said we have
been charged with administering and
taking oaths and obligations, with mul-
tiplied penalties of death, which lead
unto the temptation of all those crimes,
and which have led to the commission
|
24
of them, and we have been urged to
abolish these oaths, obligations and
penalties.
There is another error in this state-
ment of the charges against themselves,
to which the appellants pleaded not
guilty, evidently suited to evade the
real question at issue. Their charges
are couched in general and indefinite
terms, prepared for the purpose of
meeting them with positive denial, by
the mental reservation of their own
misconstructions. They say, for ex-
ample, that they have been charged
with various blasphemous practices.
Now what do they mean by blasphe-
mous practices. Blasphemy by the
common law, and by some of the sta-
tutes of the states, is an indictable
crime—and it is defined by Blackstone
to be the denial of the being or Provi-
dence of God; or contumelious re-
proaches of our Saviour, Christ—or
profane scoffing at the holy scriptures,
or exposing it to contempt and ridicule.
Now, sir, if before the disclosures of
Wm. Morgan, at the ceremonies of
initiation to the several degrees of ma-
sonry, the Grand High Priest of the
Royal Arch Chapters, and Master of
Lodges, instead of consciously hiding
their heads in secrecy; if you, sir, as
the sovereign Master, or most Excel-
lent Prelate of an Encampment, as the
Grand High Priest, or principal So-
journer of a Chapter, or as the Master
of a Lodge, had exhibited in public
the theatrical representations of the
murder of Hiram Abiff, of Moses and
the God of Heaven in the burning
bush, and of drinking the fifth libation
from a human skull, with an invoca-
tion by the drinker of all the sins of
him whose skull formed that cup, upon
his own head; if in the presence of your
fellow citizens, you had uttered, as
equally grave and soleman truth, a nar-
rative compounded one half of quota-
tions from Holy Writ, and the other
half of the senseless and brutal mum-
meries of Masonry, would you have
been surprised, if the next morning a
Grand Jury of your country had pre-
sented you for blasphemy? Could you
have imagined any thing more calcu-
lated to bring reproach and contempt,
and ridicule upon the name of God and
upon the Holy Scriptures? If any one
of the ministers of God whom you al-
lure into the bosom of a charitable in-
stitution, by admitting them gratuitous-
ly to its promises and its rewards,
should tell his people from the pulpit,
that Hiram Abiff, the widow’s son,
was master of a Lodge of masons, at
the building of Solomon’s temple, that
he was murdered by three Fellow
Crafts, named Jubela, Jubelo, and Ju-
belum, that those three Fellow Crafts
had suffered the penalties which they
had invoked upon themselves, and that
ever since that time those same penal-
ties had been the standing penalties of
the first three degrees of Masonry,
would there be one hearer of that mi-
nister of Christ, beyond the reach of
the cable-tow, but would pronounce
him guilty of provoking contempt and
ridicule upon the Scriptures?
Why, sir, if the pastor of a christian
church should bind up Gulliver’s Tra-
vels, between the Old and New Testa-
ment of his Bible, and read indiscrimi-
nately from the whole, the gospel,
epistle or collect of the day, what opi-
nion would his auditory form of his
piety or his morals? And yet there is
much of truth and much of moral in-
struction in Gulliver’s Travels. Far,
far more of wisdom in the philosophers
of the flying Island of Lagado, than in
the bungling metamorphosis of Hiram
the Tyrian Brass Founder at the build-
ing of Solomon’s temple, into a master
mason, or in the “butcheries which
would disgust a savage,” executed upon
the three Tyrian fellow crafts, and
which you require of the candidates
for admission to the three first degrees,
to invoke upon themselves.
These are the practices which some
of the ardent and zealous Antimasons
of Vermont may possibly have quali-
fied as blasphemous—I am not willing
to consider them as such. That very
secrecy under which they are perform-
ed, and which otherwise constitutes
one of the most powerful objections to
25
the institutions, may perhaps relieve it
from the charge of blasphemy. The
intention is not to provoke contempt
and ridicule upon the Scriptures, al-
though the effect of them, as dramatic
fictions, might often be to produce it.
When John Milton published his Pa-
radise Lost, Andrew Marvell declared
that he for some time misdoubted his
intent,
...” That he would ruin
The sacred truths to fable the old song—
And he adds—
Or if a work so infinite be spann'd,
Jealous I was that some less skilful hand,
Might hence presume the whole creations day
To change in scenes, and show it in a play.
That which the penetrating sagacity
and sincere piety of Andrew Marvell
apprehended as an evil which might
result even from the sublime strains of
the Paradise Lost is precisely what
the contrivers of the masonic mysteries
have effected. They have travestied
the awful and miraculous supernatural
communications of the ineffable Jeho-
vah to his favoured people, into stage
plays. The word, which in the be-
ginning was with God, and was God.
That abstract, incorporeal, and ever
living existence; that eternal presence,
without past, without future time; that
BEING, without beginning of days or
end of years, declared to Moses under
the name of I AM THAT I AM; the
mountebank juggleries of masonry turn
into a farce. . A companion of the
Royal Arch personates Almighty God
—and declares himself the Being of
all Eternity—I AM THAT I AM.
Your intention in the performance of
this ceremony is to strike the imagina-
tion of the candidate with terror and
amazement. I acquit the fraternity,
therefore, of blasphemy. But I cannot
acquit them of extreme indiscretion,
and inexcusable abuse of the Holy
Scriptures. The sealed obligation, the
drinking of wine from a human skull,
is a ceremony not less objectionable,
This, you know, sir, is the scene in
which the candidate takes the skull in
his hand and says—“ as the sins of the
4.
whole world were laid upon the head
of our Saviour, so may the sins of the
person whose skull this once was, be
heaped upon my head in addition to
my own; and may they appear in
judgment against me, both here and
hereafter, should I violate any obliga-
tion in masonry or the orders of knight-
hood which I have heretofore taken,
take at this time, or may be hereafter
instructed in; so help me God;” and
he drinks the wine from the skull.
And is not this enough? No. The
Knight Templar takes an oath contain-
ing many promises—binding himself
under no less penalty than to have
his head struck off and placed on the
highest spire in christendom, should
he knowingly or willingly violate any
part of his solemn obligation of a
Knight Templar.
Mr. Livingston, is this a fitting obli-
gation for a christian man to take or
to administer? Can you—can any
man be surprised, if some of the Anti-
masons of Vermont have mistaken it
for blasphemy? When the masons of
Vermont, or when the Grand Encamp-
ment of the United States shall feel
sufficient confidence in their own in-
tegrity to meet the real charges against
the institution face to face, let them
not resort to their refuge of secrecy as
a hunted ostrich hides his head in the
sand—let them frankly acknowledge
the dramatic exhibition of the burning
bush, and the mystical cup of the fifth
Libation, and give their definition of
blasphemy from which these practices
shall be pure.
And these remarks apply equally to
the declaration of the masons in Con-
necticut, and of the 1200 in Massa-
chusetts. The Report of the Commit-
tee of the General Grand Royal Arch
Chapter says, that these declarations
were made with apparent sincerity of
heart, that they denied the charges
against them [the masons] “ and uni-
versally cast themselves and their cause
upon the good sense of the country,
for a calm, dispassionate and enlighten-
ed verdict.”
26
And here the report of the Commit
tee rested the statement respecting the
condition of masonry in Vermont, Con-
necticut and Massachusetts. The meet-
ing of the General Grand Royal Arch
Chapter was held at the close of Nov.
1832, The committee was raised to
report upon the present condition of
masonry—and they report a declara-
tion of two hundred masons in Ver-
mont in 1829, and a declaration of
twelve hundred masons of Massachu-
setts in 1831.
Mr. Slade’s Essays upon the Ma-
sonic Penalties, were published in Ver-
mont in 1830, a year after the appeal
of the 200 masons. The charter of
incorporation of the Masonic Lodges
in Vermont were revoked by the Le-
gislature of that state in 1831. An
Antimasonic Governor and Council
and Antimasonic Electors of President
and Vice President of the United
States were elected in 1831 and 32—
the last within one month before the
meeting of the General Grand Royal
Arch Chapter of the United States.
These were all significant indications
of the verdict, passed by the people of
Vermont upon the appeak of 200 ma-
sons of 1820. But upon all these the
Committee of the Grand Royal Arch
Chapter of the United States observe
a “ dignified silence.” Like the Rhode
Island Grand Lodge, with regard to
the kidnapping and murder of Mor-
gan by the Royal Arch Masons, they
knew nothing about it!
The declaration of the 1200 masons
of Massachusetts was published in De-
cember, 1831. In September, 1832,
less than three months before the meet-
ing of the General Grand Royal Arch
Chapter of the United States, a state
Antimasonic Convention was held at
Worcester, at which an address was
adopted containing a counter declara-
tion to that of the 1200. A commit-
tee of that Convention tendered to the
Grand Lodge and Grand Chapter an
issue, upon 38 special allegations against
the masonic institution, to be tried, in
any form best adapted to establish truth
and expose imposition. And what
was the answer of the 1200 masons,
who had made the declaration? “Dig-
nified silence.” What was the answer
of the Grand Lodge and Grand Chap-
ter of Massachusetts? “Dignified si-
lence.” And what the report of the
Committee of the General Grand Royal
Arch Chapter of the United States, on
the [then] PRESENT condition of the
Masonic Institution? “Dignified si-
lence.” The 1200 masons of Massa-
chusetts, like the 200 masons of Ver-
mont, make a statement of charges
which they can safely deny—assume
them as the charges of the Antimasons
against them, deny them, and then put
themselves upon the country. When
the Antimasons tender them a direct
issue, upon specific charges, equally
serious and explicit—the 1200—the
Grand Lodge—the Grand Chapter—all
stand mute, and the report of the
Committee of the Grand Royal Arch
Chapter of the United States, upon the
PRESENT condition of the masonic in-
stitution, goes back one, two and three
years to tell of the declarations of ma-
sons in Massachusetts, and in Vermont.
But as to any Antimasonic refutation
of those declarations, the Committee
knew nothing about it.
The report of the Committee of the
General Grand Royal Arch Chapter of
the United States, was therefore an in-
correct representation of the state of
the masonic institution, so far as con-
cerned the states of Massachusetts and
Vermont, nor was it more accurate in
its reference to the state of Masonry
in Rhode Island.
J. Q. ADAMS.
Quincy, June 12, 1833.
LETTER 6–4 WD L.A.ST.
To EDWARD LIVINGSTON,
Grand High Priest of the General Grand
Royal Arch Chapter of the United States,
and late Secretary of State of the said
United States.
SIR.—You have seen in my last letter
the statement made by the committee of
the General Grand Royal Arch Chapter
of the United States, at their meeting in
November last, of the then PRESENT CON-
DITION of the masonic institution in the
27
states of Vermont, Massachusetts and Con-
necticut. You have seen that to exhibit
this present condition of the craft, the re-
port of the committee travelled backward
in the race of time, one, two and three
years to the declarations of their own in-
nocence, by certain masons of those states
—the exclam ution of Banquo–“ Thou
canst not say I did it!” But that upon the
more recent events—the revocation of
the masonic charters in Vermont—the
successive issues of the popular elections
in that state, and the 38 specific charges
against masonry, tendered by the commit-
tee of the Antimasonic Convention at
Worcester, to the presiding officers of the
Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Massachu-
setts, and of the Grand Lodge; upon all
this, the committee of the General Grand
Royal Arch Chapter of the United States,
observed a profound and “ dignified si-
lence.” And yet, Sir, that issue of thirty-
eight charges had been tendered on the
11th of September, 1832——nearly nine
months after the declaration of the twelve
hundred masons of Massachusetts, and less
than three months before the meeting of
the General Grand Royal Arch Chapter
of the United States, at Baltimore.
Now, Sir, was not the presiding officer
of the Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Ma-
sons of Massachusetts, to whom this issue
was tendered, the identical chairman of
the committee of the General Grand Roy.
al Arch Chapter of the United States,
which made this report on the then pre-
sent conditon of masonry in the United
States? And iſ he was, upon what princi-
ple admissible in a narrative of realities,
could a report upon the PRESENT CONDITION
of masonry in the United States, go back
three years for declarations of masonic in-
nocence, and overlook, or totally suppress,
the recent and actually present charges
of masonic guilt, which must have been
yet sounding in the ears of the chairman
of the General Grand Royal Arch Chapter
who made the report? Is not the chrono-
logy of Masonry as peculiar to itself as its
logic.
The committee upon the present con-
dition of masonry in the United States,
proceeded further to report, that from
certain documents which had been for a
long time before the public, it appeared
that very different measures in relation
to the subject had been adopted in the
state of Rhode Island—and so the com-
mittee reporting upon the present condi-
tion of the institution, choose to resort one
ly to documents, which had been a long
time before the public. They say,
That in Rhode Island “a memorial ema-
nating from an Antimasonic Convention,
held in December, 1830, charging the
Grand Lodge, and other masonic bodies
with the violation of the constitution and
the laws of the land, was formally present-
ed to the Legislature of the state, and the
Grand Lodge, in reviewing the memorial,
chaallenged the strictest scrutiny, and of.
fered the greatest facilities to an investi-
gation of all their concerns'—but that ‘it
seems, however, that after the most labo-
rious and patient investigation of the sub-
jects referred to in the memorial by an able
and impartial committee, the Lodges were
sustained by the Legislature of the state,
and were viPTUALLY and triumphantly ac-
quitted from all the charges which had
been brought against them.”
And who would imagine that within
two months after this representation of
the present condition of masonry in Rhode
Island, the Legislature of that state did,
by unanimous assent in both houses, enact
a law, prohibiting the administration of
extra-judicial, and of course of all masonic
oaths, upon no less penalties than a fine
of one hundred dollars for the first offence,
and pâlitical disfranchisement for the se-
cond. This was the first result of that
investigation, which the committee of the
General Grand Royal Arch Chapter con-
sider as having issued so triumphantly for
the Lodges and chapters of Rhode Island.
They pronounce the investigating com-
mittee of the Rhode Island Legislature
“ able and impartial.” Of their ability;
no question will be made; but where did
the reporter of the Grand Royal Arch
Chapter of the United States find the evi-
dence of their impartiality! Was it in the
report of the majority, or in that of the
minority of the investigating committee.
Was it in the exclusion by the majority of
the committee, of the very memorialists
who had brought the charges against ma;
sonry before the Legislature, from all
participation in the investigation? . Was it
in the bargain made by the chairiman of
the committee with the masonic dignità"
ries of the state, that if they would give
their obligations, they should not be ques”
tioned about their secrets! a bargain inade
without the knowledge or consent of at
28
least one member of the committee. A
bargain to which the masonic authorities
held the committee of the Legislature so
strictly, that they repeatedly refused to
answer questions most pertinent to the in-
vestigation, appealing to the chairman
himself, for the performance of his pro-
mise, that they should not be required to
disclose any of their secrets. Is that the
impartiality of a legislative investigation
of charges of crimination?––first, to ex-
clude those who make the charges, from
all participation in the process of inquiry
——and them to contract with the parties
accused, that they shall be privileged to
refuse answering upon every thing which
they choose to keep secret. This was
the course of proceeding of this impartial
Committee.
You are too well acquainted with the
prevailing politics in the Legislature of
Rhode Island, at the time when this com-
mittee was appointed, not to know, that
the main object of its appointment was to
put down antimasonry in Rhode Island.
The resolution for appointing it was pre-
pared by the chairman, but was offered
by another member. In urging the pas-
sage of the resolution, both these persons
indulged themselves in bitter invectives
against the antimasons, and the report of
the majority of the committee carries up-
on every page the most conclusive inter-
mal evidence that the purpose for which
the committee was raised, was, to screen
the masonic institution and brotherhood
from the investigation which had been
demanded by the antimasonic memorial,
and to substitute in its place a colourable
examination, upon which the masons
should answer just so much as should suit
themselves, and fall back upon their obli-
gations of secrecy whenever they should
think a disclosure adverse to their inte-
I'ests, z
The proceedings of the majority of the
committee were conformable to the prin-
ciples with which they entered upon the
performance of the service assigned to
them. The examination was so conducted
that the masonic witnesses answered just
So far as they thought proper, and when
a question was put, which from very
shame they loathed to answer, they ap-
Pealed to their agreement with the chair-
man, and set the inquiry at defiance.
The committee stated in their report,
that, aware of the scruples of the masonic
witnesses, about disclosing their masonic
secrets, which they had promised not to
disclose, they “resolved unanimously that
they would require the masons to com-
municate to them fully, their masonic
oaths or obligations, and to answer all
questions which should be asked respect-
ing them—those obligations not being con-
sidered as part of their secrets”—but “as
to their signs, and tokens, and words, con-
trived to enable masons, and none others,
to enter lodges, and to distinguish one an-
other from those not masons, a majority of
the committee believed that the public
would have no curiosity about them, and
that it would not be a profitable or cre-
ditable employment for the committee to
endeavour to pry into them.” *
Admirable impartiality. Unlawful and
immoral secret rites and ceremonies, was
the first and foremost of all the charges
against masonry, from the sinking of their
victim in the waters of the Niagara river.
The supreme Legislative authority of the
state, are called upon to investigate the
subject. They appoint a committee for
that purpose. The committee, possessed
of the whole authority of the state to
command testimony, and elicit the whole
truth—begin by excluding the accusers
from all participation in the inquiry, and
then bargain with the accused to ask no
questions about their secrets, if they will
but divulge what they themselves consider
as no secret at all. ..”
I do not propose to follow the majority
of the committee through the mazes of
their most extraordinary report. The
report of Mr. Sprague, the member of
the committee whose views differed from
those of his colleagues, and the authentic
report of their proceedings by Benjamin
F. Hallett and George Turner have shown
in full relief the meaning of the word im-
partiality, as exemplified by the commit-
tee and their chairman, who drew up their
report. And yet, so far was the commit-
tee entitled to the praise of impartiality,
that they came unanimously to the con-
clusion that the institution of freemasonry
ought to be abolished, and the report con-
cludes with an earnest and eloquent ex-
hortation to the masonic fraternity to
abandon it,
Is it not very remarkable that the re-
port to the General Grand Royal Arch
Chapter of the United States, upon the
present condition of masonry, which so high-
, 29
ly approves this report of the Rhode
Island investigating committee, takes not
the slightest notice of this their opinion and
exhortation? The Grand Royal Arch re-
port affirms, that upon the report of the
Rhode Island investigating committee,
“the Lodges were sustAINED by the Le-
gislature of the state.” Sustained! . This
“able and impartial” committee say,
“It cannot be doubted that the Lodges
and Chapters in that part of the state, [of
New York] had it fully in their power to
have detected and brought to justice many
of the criminals concerned in the abduc-
tion of Morgan, if not those concerned in
his murder, And yet we do not find that
they have expelled a single member, or
made any manner of inquiry about them.
Can it be denied that by such conduct
those Lodges and Chapters have impli-
cated themselves in the guilt of those trans-
actions, and made themselves responsible
for it? And not they alone are implicated.
The higher masonic authorities, to whom
they are subordinate and accountable, are
equally implicated and responsible.”
The higher authorities to whom the
Chapters in that part of the state of New
York are subordinate and accountable,
are the Grand Chapter of the State, and
the General Grand Royal Arch Chapter
of the United States. Yes, sir, in this
passage of the Rhode Island “able and
jmpartial” investigating committee’s re-
port, the very Chapter of which you are
the High Priest, the General Grand Royal
Arch Chapter of the United States is in-
plicitly charged with being implicated
and responsible for the guilt of the mur-
der of Morgan. How comes it, sir, that
the committee of the General Grand Roy-
al Arch Chapter of the Uniled States re-
porting upon the present condition of ma-
sonry, and expressly referring to this
report of the investigating legislative com-
mittee of Rhode Island, should have over-
looked entirely this charge against the
Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the United
States itself? How dared that committee
to affirm that, as the result of that inves-
tigation, the Lodges were sustained by .
the legislature of the state? The report
of the Rhode Island investigating commit-
tee expressly charges the Grand Chapter
of New York, and the General Grand
Royal Arch Chapter of the United States,
With being implicated in and responsible
for the murder of Morgan, and the atro-
Q
cious transactions connected with it, and
the report of the General Grand Royal
Arch Chapter of the United States calls
this a triumphant acquittal of the Lodges
of Rhode Island
Permit me, sir, to present to your con-
sideration two more extracts, from the
same report of the majority of the Rhode
Island investigating committee:—
“The old forms of the oaths, which are
still adhered to, are extremely in proper.
It is true that the construction which the
masons put upon them in this state [Rhode
Island] renders them harmless, but that
is by no means the natural construction
of the language itself. The oaths taken
by themselves, without being corrected
and controlled by the addresses and
charges, are, according to the terms of
them, clearly criminal. And can it be
proper to take obligations, the different
parts of which are in direct collision with,
and contradiction to, each other, and yet
the whole to be sworn to?
But it is an insurmountable objection
to those oaths, that they are liable to a
construction which renders them in the
highest degree criminal and dangerous;
and that such a construction has actually
been put upon them by masons, and has
been productive of the most dreadful con-
aequences.”
The following is the concluding sen-
tence of the report:— -
“This committee cannot but come to
the conclusion that the masons owe it to
the community, to themselves, and to
sound principles, now to discontinue the
masonic institutions.”
To what a desperate extremity must the
committee of the General Grand Royal
Arch Chapter of the United States have
been reduced, for matter to report upon
the present condition of masonry, when
they were willing to accept and represent
this as a triumphant acquittal of the
Rhode Island Lodges and Chapters?
Yet this was the report of a committee
so partial to the masonic fraternity, that,
invested with the entire legislative power
to investigate their institution, they did
in fact abdicate their legitimate rights
and powers, by a bargain with the ma-
sons to screen them from the exposure of
their most odious ceremonies. They ac-
cepted and countenanced a fraudulent ex-
planation, and pretended construction of
the penalties of the masonic oaths.
Fraudulent, as every master mason must
know, who at his reception is told that
the penalttes are, and have been from the
building of Soloumon's temple, the same
penalties which were eacecuted upon the
murderers of Hiram Abiff.
The allegation by the Rhode Island
committee, that they considered it an un-
profitable employment to be prying into
masonic secrets, would be more plausible
if those serets consisted only of the “signs
and tokens, and words, contrived to ena-
ble masons, and none others, to enter
lodges, and to distinguish one another
from those not masons;” but how is the
fact? The tokens and pass-words are, to
be sure, of the character described by Sir
| Toby Belch, in Shakspeare’s Twelfth
Night, “most excellent sense-less.” But
the signs are explanatory of the true
meaning of the penalties, and when the
committee compelled the masons to give
the words of their obligations, was it not
an incongruous scruple of delicacy, to
draw the veil over the coincident signs
which give to those words their most en-
ergetic significancy?
Under the exceedingly accommodating
indulgence of the investigating commit-
tele, the Knights Templars of Rhode
Island were permitted to skulk from all
testimony relating to the fifth Libation,
denominated in masonic language “the
'sealed obligation.” How the committee,
consistently with their own rule, could
release the witnesses from testifying to
that pious solemnity, it is not easy to see.
The oath of the Knight Templar has, like
the rest, a penalty, which is, having the
swearer’s skull smitten off and suspended
to “rest high on spires,” as the masonic
minstrels deliciously sing; and that oath
and penalty the Rhode Island Knights
did give according to contract with the
committee. But the fifth Libation is an ob-
ligation of higher order. The temporal
penalties of cruel death, and barbarous
mutilation, are not sufficient to bind the
conscience of the Knight Templar. In
the fifth Libation he invokes eternal pu-
nishment upon his immortal soul. He
calls upon God, his Creator, to visit upon
him at the judgment day, not only his
own sins, but all the sins of his fellow
mortal man, from whose skull he quaffs
the cup of abomination and of mystery.
The most remarkable scene in the in-
vestigation of the Rhode Island commit-
30
tee, was that in which William Wilkin-
son, a Knight Templar, and a man of
most respectable character was examined
with reference to this sealed obligation,
the fifth Libation. The words always ut-
tered before drinking the wine from the
skull, were read to him from Allyn’s
Ritual, p. 250, and he was asked whether
they were administered to him on taking
the Knight Templar’s obligation. He an-
swered, “these words made no part of
the OBLIGATION which was administered
to me on taking the Knight Templar's de-
gree.”
From this answer, an unlearned and
uninitiated person would naturally con-
clude that these words form no part of
the ceremony of initiation to the Knight
Templar’s degree, and it is from denials
of precisely the same character as this,
that the great mass of adhering masons,
ministers of the Holy Gospel included,
have laboured to blast the credit of Allyn’s
and Bernard’s books; but Mr. Wilkin-
son’s denial hinged upon the word obli-
gation only. There is, as I have remark-
ed, another obligation administered to the
Knight Templar, on taking his degree,
and that obligation was among those fur-
nished to the committee. That was the .
obligation which Mr. Wilkinson had in
his mental contemplation when he denied
that the words of the sealed obligation
were part of THE obligation administered
to him. Had the examination rested
there, well might the committee of the
Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the United
States have boasted of the triumphant ac-
quittal of the Rhode Island Masons. But
here the examination did not rest. Mr.
Wilkinson was asked whether these said
words were used in any ceremony of ini-
tiation to the Knight Templar's? His an-
swer was, “in regard to the secrets or
ceremonies of this, or any other degrees
in masonry, I neither affirm or deny any
thing.” Upon this there was some alter-
cation between the witness and the chair-
man of the committee, who very justly
considered this as an obligation which the
masons were bound to give, but instead of
exercising the authority vested in the
committee by the legislature, and exact-
ing an answer, he argued with the witness
to persuade him to answer, and finished
by submitting to his refusal. This was
indeed the triumph of masonry; not the
triumph of acquitted innocence, but the
31
riumph of sturdy contumacy, setting at
efiance the legislative authority of the
tate.
That Mr. Wilkinson should be ashamed
o acknowledge that he had ever pro-
ounced, with an appeal to God, such words
S those, and accompanied them with such
words as those, and accompanied them
ith such an action, is creditable to his
ense of discrimination between right and
wrong. The sealed obligation is not one
f those signs, grips, tokens or pass words,
y which the masonic fraternity discern
he genuine from the spurious imposter.
It is one of the obligations of the craft,
which the committee had determined to re-
quire, and which the Rhode Island Masons
were bound by the terms of their agree-
ment with the chairman of the committee
to give. The fifth libation therefore—
the potation of the skull of “Old Simon,
and the invocation of all the sins, heinous
and deadly as they may be, of another
man, upon the head of the self-devoted
Knight Templar, are yet, so far as adher-
ing masonic acknowledgment is concerned,
“undivulged crimes—unwhip’dof justice.”
Mr. Wilkinson did not venture to deny
that the words of the sealed obligation
were precisely those recorded in Allyn's
ritual—he neither affirmed nor denied.
of the sealed obligation, is reserved for
the investigation of a committee more
resolute and less compromising with the
transcendant sovereignity of Freemasonry
than the Rhode Island committee was found
to be.
the laws of the masonic empire, will be
required to discover in all its loveliness,
that feature of its code. In the Rhode
Island investigations another witness, a
minister of the gospel, upon being asked
if he had drank wine from a human sknll,
answered---"I do not know that it can ef.
fect the interests of any one whether I
drank wine out of a skull, a tin cup or a
basin. A third witness declined answer-
ing the question.
In the 521st page of Allyn's Ritual—
the very next page after that which dis-
closes the formula used in drinking the
fith libation, there is the following note:
“The sealed obligation is referred to by
Templars, in confidential communications
relative to matters of vast importance,
when other masonic obligations seem in-
The full, adhering masonic authentication.
A more searching investigation of
sufficient to secure secrecy, silence and
safety. Such for instance was the mur-
der of William Morgan, which was com-
municated from one Templar to another,
under the pledge and upon this sealed ob-
ligation. The attentive ear receives the
sound from the instructive tongue; and the
mysteries of Freemasonry were safely
lodged in the repository of faithful breasts
--until it was communicated in St. John’s
Hall, New York, in an encampment of
Knights Templars, March 10, 1828.”
To this ſact, Mr. Allyn made oath before
a magistrate in the city of New York,
and that it was so communicated to him at
an encampment of Knights Templars. Of
the pains that have been taken to discre-
dit Allyn’s testimony it is not necessary
for me to speak, but in the 22d of Col.
Stone’s Letters, page 238, there is a frank
and full acknowledgment by him, himself
a Knight Templar, that after having long
totally disbelieved the statement he did
finally satisfy himself that it was substan-
tially true
With the thoughts that crowd upon me
in recurring to this proof of the power.
and practices of masonry, I will not now
trouble you or the public. The Legisla-
ture of Rhode Island, after such an inves-
tigation even as this, prohibited the admi-
nistration of all extra judicial oaths. How
their committee could submit to the sup-
pression of masonic testimony to the seal-
ed obligation is not easily explained. But
the agonies of the Knights Templars at
the very call upon them to testify to the
sealed obligation, are eloquent commen-
taries upon the note in the 251st page of
Allyn's Ritual, and upon the candid ac-
knowledgment in Col. Stone's 22d Letter.
And so, Sir, the murder of William
Morgan was by one of its perpetrators,
regularly communicated to an encampment
of Knights Templars in the city of New
York in March, 1828, and those Knights
Templars (Col. Stone certifies to the fact,
knows not who they are; he thinks them
unworthy, but in the vocabulary of the
handmaid they are worthy masons) assist-
ed this murderer and furnished him with
the means of escaping from the retribution
of public justice and the laws of the land!
And yet, this was entirely conformable
to the laws of masonry. It interfered in
no respect with the religion or politics of
any one Knight Templar of the encamp-
ment! It was a memorable exemplifica-

















32
tion of the promise to assist a worthy
brother in extricating him from difficulty,
whether he is right or wrong. It was most
sincerely explanatory of the obligation to
conceal the secrets of a worthy brother;
murder and treason not excepted, or ex-
cepted at the option of Sir Knight himself,
and it did not even exact of the illustrious
brotherhood that they should go barefoot
to apprize this “ western sufferer” of the
danger with which he was threaten-
ed, and those transactions all occurred
before the revelation of the obligations of
the higher degrees of masonry by the Le
Rov Convention of seceders, on the 4th
July 1828. Of these facts, thus notorious,
thus abominabe, thus undeniable, why
have the Legislature, why has the Execu-
tive of the state of New York, why have
the Grand Juries of the city never been
informed? Why have the General Grand
Encampment of the United States observ-
ed upon these acts of men under their
jurisdiction a dignified silence? Why, but
because they have resolved to adhere, and
have recommended to the brotherhood
under the jurisdiction to adhere to the an-
cient landmarks of the Institution?
Mr. Livingston, I shall here close the
series of letters which I have addressed
to you as the head and most conspicuous
member of the masonic Fraternity in these
United States; holding at the same time
offices of high dignity, power and influence
in the Government of the Union. The
General Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the
United States, of which you are the Grand
High Priest, did at their triennial meeting
at Baltimore last November, highly com-
mend certain Chapters and Lodges which
had changed their own nature by substi-
tuting the study of the useful arts and
science, for the miserable fooleries of their
pageantry, and did earnestly recommend
to all the Chapters under their jurisdiction
the same excellent reformation and trans-
formation. It was that recommendation
which suggested to me the idea of calling
upon you to accomplish a revolution still
more useful and commendable; the aboli-
tion of all the execrable oaths, obligations
and penalties, which until they shall be
utterly abolished, are and must be an in-
delible disgrace to the Institution. If you
have power to convert your Lodges into
Lyceums and your Chapters and encamp-
ments into Schools of Science, you cannot
lack the power of redeeming the Institu-
tion from the infamy of lawless oaths, of
barbarous obligations, of brutal penalties;
with that infamy your institution is now
polluted, as it is with the blood of William
Morgan, nor can the “labour” or “refresh-
ment” of all the Royal Arch Chapters on
the globe wash it out.
It is in your power, Sir. to remove this
stumbling block and this foolishness from
the institution over which you preside for
ever. Look to the seventh chapter of
the first book of Kings, and you will find
that Hiram of Tyre, the widow’s son, who
worked at the building of the temple of
Solomon, was not a mason, but “cunning
to work all works in brass.” Whether
this fitted him the better for the selection
of the first contrivers of your order, as
the founder of the craft, is a problem for
your learned, and especially for your cle-
rical antiquarians to solve; but the fact
that he was a workman in brass, and that
the two pillars in the porch of the tem-
ple, Jachin and Boaz, were not works of
masonry, but of brass, stamps with gross
imposture the whole history of the insti-
tution. In like manner every pretension
of the order to historical connexion with
any portion of the Holy Scriptures, is im-
posture, and must be known so to be, to
every intelligent minister of the gospel,
who takes upon himself your obligations,
The existence of such an order is a foul
blot upon the morals of a community. The
strength, the glory, the happiness of a
nation are all centred in the purity of its
morals; and institutions founded upon im-
posture, are the worst of all corruptions,
for they poison the public morals at their
fountains, and by multiplying the accom-
plices in guilt, arm them with the confi-
dence of virtue.
Whether your dignity as the head of
the Royal Arch of this Union, is to cease
upon your departure from this country,
or to continue during your absence, has
not yet been announced to the world, but
in neither event, be assured that neither
your masonic addresses, nor the proceed-
ings of the General Grand Royal Arch
Chapter of the United States will hence-
forth pass without observation into obli-
VIOI,
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Quincy, July 11, 1833