sons, though they do not count one in four of the whole number of persons equally well qualified and eligible to fill them. Inquire for yourselves as to the number of masons, who have filled the town, county and state offices, within your knowledge; and you will not fail to discern a striking effect of the inequality produced, by the obligations of Freemasonry.

If you have read the statements of respectable men, who have renounced it, you have learnt, that in ordinary times and in many cases, it has successfully assailed the great duties, upon which all our social advantages depend. Its obligations are utterly destructive of that equality of right, which our constitutions and laws are intended to maintain. They are inconsistent with the oaths of legislators, judges, grand jurors, petit jurors, sheriffs, and every other public functionary, because they enjoin illegal and unrighteous favor to brethren, and unjust and oppressive opposition to the uninitiated, in a vast variety of the most important exigencies of life. They are now, and have long been fatal to that political equality, which every freeman should most highly prize, because it is the only efficient means of suppressing all wrongful inequality.

No man would dare to take upon himself the obligations of Freemasonry in public. Or if he did, no man would expect public favor afterwards. And shall we permit their existence, because they are taken secretly? Shall we yield up all our rights as a boon to Freemasons, for the favor they have conferred upon us, by fraudulently usurping most of them, through the fatal efficacy of their secrecy, their tokens, their cipher, and their oaths? Have we free hearts, free minds, self-respect, social love, intelligence to look before and after us, and shall we be hewers of wood, and drawers of water, for an institution rotten to the core?-of which the principles and deeds have covered all over with blisters, the fairest body politic that ever was presented to the admiration of the world?--of which the only practical use is to forge, in its gloomy fires, and fasten upon us, and all the unitiated forever, the chains of a degrading servitude? Will you submit to this? I know you will not submit to it. I know the hour draws nigh, when the whole country will be arrayed in opposi

tion to it, when the Dagon of these Philistines, who have come upon us,-when the kings and priests of Freemasonry, with all their courts, their altars, and their gods, shall sink together into everlasting oblivion, and the gavel of masonic vengeance, shall be the weapon of official oppression no more forever.

To abolish the evils of Freemasonry, open and concealed, is the object of anti-masonry-and what considerate citizen will not approve it? If masonry be the Pandora's box from which all possible evils to ourselves and country, are to be feared, let us shut it up. If it be a noisome seed bed of the most pernicious weeds, let us eradicate the weeds, remove its smothering enclosure, introduce the cheerful light and the wholesome air-dig it over, through all its compartments, and sow it with healthy and nutritious wheat. Whatever it may be likened to, let us take effectual measures to exclude its evils.

How can this be done? By resorting to the ballotbox, and by that alone. And shall we be slanderously and maliciously assailed with insinuations of sinister purposes, and with opprobrious epithets, for betaking ourselves to this resort? Is it not peaceable? Is it not honest? Is it not lawful? Is it not consistent with all the rights of others? If it is not, then their rights are wrongs to us, of which we must take the redress into our own hands.

The right of election is the paramount right of all freemen. And the place where it is exercised is the holiest, in the temple of liberty. Shall we not be permitted to go up, and offer pure homage there? There can be no acceptable homage, but what is pure. Purity of election consists in exercising the unmolested right of voting for the men, whom we think wise to know, and faithful to pursue, the best interests of the community. The best interests of the community in which our lot is cast, are the constitutional and equal rights of the citizens. These are invaded by Freemasonry. Shall not those who are opposed to Freemasonry, repel the invasion? Yes. We will repel it; and that in the most majestic court, that has ever been known among the sons of men,-in the great court of the whole people, which announces its sentences from the ballot-box.

Why should we not go into this court for the decision of our cause? Shall we not find it as respectable as any other court? Shall we not find it as honest as any other court? Shall we not find it as much under a sense of the necessity of upholding the essential rights of the people, as any other court? Shall we not find it as inaccessible to all the biasses of partial influence, as any other court? We shall. And the interests of this court, which may God in his goodness perpetuate, are our interests. Truly we might go into the subordinate courts, established in our land. But we have a right to choose; and we choose the court of the people. Is this disreputable? Or shall we be held to trial, in those courts only, where a large proportion of the officers have taken oaths against us ?where we have found it impossible to proceed to a righteous result, of the whole matter, though such a result has been sedulously pursued, for years?-and where we now know jurisdiction of the whole case does not exist.

You may repel the invasion upon your rights, (we are told, by a small number of our fellow citizens, running all over with candor and liberality;) but take care not to avail yourselves of political means, in doing it! You may repel it, by expressing gentle opinions against it! You are not obliged professedly and directly to aid the invasion. Only hold your necks still till the foot of the invader presses them to the earth, and fair opposition, by courteous words, may be permitted! Men there are, who hold this doctrine; and they go in and out among us, without the marks of conscious shame, or undisguised fatuity, upon them! Of what race are they? They come not from the true-hearted, investigating, devoted stock of the asserters of our freedom. They have no alliance with that class of men into whose bosoms, all the oppressions of tyranny serve only to burn their abhorrence of it, and all the gladdening results of liberty, to hallow their love of it.

It is merely hypocrisy, and shallow hypocrisy too, for men of common sense to pretend opposition to the existence of any thing, which they would not take the most effectual honest means to destroy. The reproach cast upon anti-masonry, for its being political, springs from attachment or subserviency to masonry; and can spring

from nothing else. And its taking a political character, would not be objected to, by those who cast upon it this reproach, only because, by being political, it will be successful. Political character, in the sense of adherence to the just policy of our government, which is the sense we entertain of it, is the highest character, which can be acquired by man, in reference to things terminating with life. And I glory in political anti-masonry. Anti-masonry is political; it must be political, or all is lost.

As citizens, our liberties are political, our rights are political, our duties are political. Let us all perform our duties, in accordance with our rights, and the rights of others, for the advancement of the just policy of our government.

But it is said that anti-masonry is bigoted, and persecuting. Bigotry is an obstinate and blind attachment to a tenet, ceremony, creed, or party. Anti-masonry is opposed, and will forever be opposed, to every tenet, ceremony, creed, or party, which infringes upon the universal rights of man. It is the real democracy of our country, embracing in its good will, as objects of its protecting care, every interest, right, duty and enjoyment, of every individual in the nation. Persecution means withholding rights, or inflicting injuries, unjustly. Such persecution is precisely what has called anti-masonry into existence; and this name of democratic freedom, will cease to exist, as soon as it has made adequate provision to secure the rights unjustly withheld, and to redress the injuries unjustly inflicted, by Freemasonry. Shall anti-masonry be accused of bigotry and persecution, then, by those too, who have invoked, upon themselves, all the wrath of the Almighty if they cease to exercise an obstinate and blind attachment to the tenets, ceremonies, creed, and party of Freemasonry, or cease to withhold rights, and inflict injuries, unjustly, upon their renouncing brethren and countrymen ?

Wanting nothing, expecting nothing, and fearing nothing, from the public, but what pertains equally to the rights and securities of every citizen, I have come before you as the representative of freemen. With no bonds upon my soul, but those of obedience to my Maker, (would that they were always felt with greater intensity,)

and with a yet unfettered body, I have spoken to you freely and indignantly of an institution, which I deem desperately wicked. But I entertain no hostility to its members. I have spoken from a regard to interests, from which I would by no means shut them out. Among them are numbered some, who partake of the same lifestream with myself, and who are as dear to my heart, as the ties of nature, early affection, and enduring sympathy, can make them. There are others to whom I owe all that can be required or given, in honor. And I should consider it as a stigma upon my character to cherish malice towards any human being.

But ours is a cause of comprehensive benevolence. It includes the interests of Freemasons as well as our own. And the most reflecting among them, are already with us, in their secret convictions. Nothing but a pride, reluctant to acknowledge error, and some fear of the vindictive hostility of the fraternity, prevents them from openly avowing it. They should avow it. Washington would pursue that course. In the path of renunciation, you follow his example, my countrymen. With him no private feelings or interests could supersede the public good. Even to what appeared to be envious clamor, injustice, and persecution to all but the high sighted eye, and all encircling hearts of patriotism, he, and the great men of the revolution, gave up the society of the Cincinnati, to which they were fastened, by all the strong links struck out in the welding fires of a glorious warfare. Follow their example. Do yourselves the great justice to discard Freemasonry. By all the unutterable privileges of life and immortality, by your most precious connexions and attachments here, and hereafter, by your undying thoughts, by your unfading hopes, renounce it.