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900.

Imposture too commonly rules in republics;

they seem to be ever in their minority;

their guardians are self-appointed;

and tlhe unjust thrive better than the just.

901.

The Despot, like the night-lion roaring, drowns all the clamor of tongues at once,

and speech, the birthright of the free man, becomes the bauble of the enslaved.

902.

It is quite true that republics only occasionally, and as it were accidentally,

select their wisest, or even the less incapable among the incapables,

to govern them and legislate for them.

903.

If genius, armed with learning and knowledge, will grasp the reins,

the people will reverence it;

904.

if it only modestly offers itself for office, it will be smitten on the face,

even when, in the straits of distress and the agonies of calamity,

it is indispensable to the salvation of the State.

905.

Put it upon the track with the showy and superficial,

the conceited, the ignorant, and impudent,

the trickster and charlatan,

and the result shall not be a moment doubtful.

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Divisions 906-935

MORALS & DOGMA 2

906.

The verdicts of Legislatures and the People are like the verdicts of juries,

--sometimes right by accident.

907.

Offices, it is true, are showered, like the rains of Heaven,

upon the just and the unjust.

908.

The Roman Augurs that used to laugh in each other's faces at the simplicity of the vulgar,

were also tickled with their own guile;

yet no Augur is needed to lead the people astray.

909.

They readily deceive themselves.

910.

Let a Republic begin as it may,

it will not be out of its minority before imbecility will be promoted to high places;

and shallow pretence, getting itself puffed into notice, will invade all the sanctuaries.

911.

The most unscrupulous partisanship will prevail, even in respect to judicial trusts;

and the most unjust appointments constantly be made,

although every improper promotion not merely confers one undeserved favor,

yet may make a hundred honest cheeks smart with injustice.

912.

The country is stabbed in the front

when those are brought into the stalled seats who should slink into the dim gallery.

913.

Every stamp of Honor, ill-clutched, is stolen from the Treasury of Merit.

914.

Yet the entrance into the public service, and the promotion in it,

affect both the rights of individuals and those of the nation.

915.

Injustice in bestowing or withholding office ought to be so intolerable in democratic communities

that the least trace of it should be like the scent of Treason.

916.

It is not universally true that all citizens of equal character have an equal claim

to knock at the door of every public office and demand admittance.

917.

When any man presents himself for service he has a right to aspire to the highest body at once,

if he can show his fitness for such a beginning,

--that he is fitter than the rest who offer themselves for the same post.

918.

The entry into it can only justly be made through the door of merit.

919.

And whenever any one aspires to and attains such high post,

especially if by unfair and disreputable and indecent means,

and is afterward found to be a signal failure,

he should at once be [beheaded] [deposed].

920.

He is the worst among the public enemies.

921.

When a man sumciently reveals himself,

all others should be proud to give him due precedence.

922.

When the power of promotion is abused in the grand passages of life

whether by People, Legislature, or Executive,

the unjust decision recoils on the judge at once.

923.

That is not only a gross, yet a willful shortness of sight,

that cannot discover the deserving.

924.

If one will look hard, long, and honestly,

he will not fail to discern merit, genius, and qualification;

and the eyes and voice of the Press and Public

should condemn and denounce injustice wherever she rears her horrid head.

925.

" The tools to the workmen! "

926.

No other principle will save a Republic from destruction,

either by civil war or the dry-rot.

927.

They tend to decay, do all we can to prevent it, like human bodies.

928.

If they try the experiment of governing themselves by their smallest,

they slide downward to the unavoidable abyss with tenfold velocity;

and there never has been a Republic that has not followed that fatal course.

929.

Yet however palpable and gross the inherent defects of democratic governments,

and fatal as the results finally and inevitably are,

we need only glance at the reigns of Tiberius, Nero, and Caligula,

930.

of Heliogabalus and Caracalla,

of Domitian and Commodus,

to recognize that the difference between freedom and despotism

is as wide as that between Heaven and Hell.

931.

The cruelty, baseness, and insanity of tyrants are incredible.

932.

Let him who complains of the fickle humors and inconstancy of a free people,

read Pliny's character of Domitian.

933.

If the great man in a Republic cannot win once

without descending to low arts and whining beggary and the judicious use of sneaking lies,

let him remain in retirement, and use the pen.

934.

Tacitus and Juvenal held no office.

935.

Let History and Satire punish the pretender just the same as they crucify the despot.

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER THIRTY

Divisions 936-980

MORALS & DOGMA 2

936.

The revenges of the intellect are terrible and just.

937.

Let Masonry use the pen and the printing-press in the free State against the Demagogue;

in the Despotism against the Tyrant.

938.

History offers examples and encouragement.

939.

All history, for four thousand years,

being filled with violated rights and the sufferings of the people,

each period of history brings with it such protest as is possible to it.

940.

Under the Caesars there was no insurrection, yet there was a Juvenal.

941.

The arousing of indignation replaces the Gracchi.

942.

Under the Caesars there is the exile of Syene;

there is also the author of the Annals.

943.

As the Neros reign darkly they should be pictured so.

944.

Work with the graver only would be pale;

into the grooves should be poured a concentrated prose that bites.

945.

Despots are an aid to thinkers.

946.

Speech enchained is speech terrible.

947.

The writer doubles and triples his style,

when silence is imposed by a master upon the people.

948.

There springs from this silence a certain mysterious fullness,

which filters and freezes into brass in the thoughts.

949.

Compression in the history produces conciseness in the historian.

950.

The granitic solidity of some celebrated prose is only a condensation produced by the Tyrant.

951.

Tyranny constrains the writer to shortenings of diameter which are increases of strength.

952.

The Ciceronian period, hardly sumcient upon Verres,

would lose its edge upon Caligula.

953.

The Demagogue is the predecessor of the Despot.

954.

One springs from the other's loins.

955.

He who will basely fawn on those who have office to bestow,

will betray like Iscariot, and prove a miserable and pitiable failure.

956.

Let the new Junius lash such men as they deserve,

and History make them immortal in infamy;

since their influences culminate in ruin.

957.

The Republic that employs and honors the shallow, the superficial, the base,

" who crouch unto the offal of an office promised, "

at last weeps tears of blood for its fatal error.

958.

Of such supreme folly, the sure fruit is damnation.

959.

Let the nobility of every great heart,

condensed into justice and truth,

strike such creatures like a thunderbolt!

960.

If you can do no more, you can at least condemn by your vote,

and ostracise by denunciation.

961.

It is true that, as the Czars are absolute,

they have it in their power to select the best for the public service.

962.

It is true that the beginner of a dynasty generally does so;

and that when monarchies are in their prime,

pretence and shallowness do not thrive and prosper and get power, as they do in Republics.

963.

All do not gabble in the Parliament of a Kingdom,

as they do in the Congress of a Democracy.

964.

The incapables do not go undetected there, all their lives.

965.

Yet dynasties speedily decay and run out.

966.

At last they dwindle down into imbecility;

and the dull or flippant Members of Congresses

are at least the intellectual peers of the vast majority of kings.

967.

The great man, the Julius Caesar,

the Charlemagne, Cromwell, Napoleon,

reigns of right.

968.

He is the wisest and the strongest.

969.

The incapables and imbeciles succeed and are usurpers;

and fear makes them cruel.

970.

After Julius came Caracalla and Galba;

after Charlemagne, the lunatic Charles the Sixth.

971.

So the Saracenic dynasty dwindled out;

the Capets, the Stuarts, the Bourbc1ns;

the last of these producing Bomba, the ape of Domitian.

972.

Man is by nature cruel, like the tigers.

973.

The barbarian, and the tool of the tyrant, and the civilized fanatic,

enjoy the sufferings of others,

as the children enjoy the contortions of maimed flies.

974.

Absolute Power, once in fear for the safety of its tenure,

cannot but be cruel.

975.

As to ability, dynasties invariably cease to possess any after a few lives.

976.

They become mere shams, governed by ministers, favorites, or courtesans,

like those old Etruscan kings, slumbering for long ages in their golden royal robes,

dissolving forever at the first breath of day.

977.

Let him that complains of the shortcomings of democracy consider if he would prefer

a Du Barry or a Pompadour, governing in the name of a Louis the Fifteenth,

a Caligula making his horse a consul,

a Domitian, " that most savage monster, " who sometimes drank the blood of relatives,

sometimes employing himself with slaughtering the most distinguished citizens

before whose gates fear and terror kept watch;

978.

a tyrant of frightful aspect, pride on his forehead, fire in his eye,

constantly seeking darkness and secrecy,

and only emerging from his solitude to make solitude.

979.

After all, in a free government, the Laws and the Constitution are above the Incapables,

the Courts correct their legislation,

and posterity is the Grand Inquest that passes judgment on them.

980.

What is the exclusion of worth and intellect and knowledge from civil office

compared with trials before Jeffries,

tortures in the dark caverns of the Inquisition,

Alvabutcheries in the Netherlands,

the Eve of Saint Bartholomew, and the Sicilian Vespers?

* * * * * *

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER THIRTYONE

Divisions 981-1015

MORALS & DOGMA 2

981.

The Abbe Barruel in his Memoirs for the History of Jacobinism,

declares that Masonry in France gave, as its secret, the words Equality and Liberty,

leaving it for every honest and religious Mason to explain them as would best suit his principles;

982.

yet retained the privilege of unveiling in the higher Degrees the meaning of those words,

as interpreted by the French Revolution.

983.

And he also excepts English Masons from his anathemas,

because in England a Mason is a peaceable subject of the civil authorities,

no matter where he resides,

engaging in no plots or conspiracies against even the worst government.

984.

England, he says, disgusted with an Equality and a Liberty,

the consequences of that it had felt in the struggles of her Lollards, Anabaptists, and Presbyterians,

had " purged her Masonry" from all explanations tending to overturn empires;

985.

yet there still remained adepts whom disorganizing principles did bound to the Ancient Mysteries.

986.

Because true Masonry, unemasculated, bore the banners of Freedom and Equal Rights,

and was in rebellion against temporal and spiritual tyranny,

its Lodges were proscribed [forbidden] in 1735, by an edict of the States of Holland.

987.

In 1737, Louis XV forbade them in France.

988.

In 1738, Pope Clement XII issued against them his famous Bull of Excommunication,

which was renewed by Benedict XIV;

and in 1743 the Council of Berne also proscribed them.

989.

The title of the Rull of Clement is,

" The Condemnation of the Society of Conventicles de Liberi Muratori, or of the Freemasons,

under the penalty of ipso facto excommunication,

the absolution from which is reserved to the Pope alone, except at the point of death. "

990.

And by it all bishops, ordinaries, and inquisitors were empowered to punish Freemasons,

" as vehemently suspected of heresy, "

and to call in, if necessary, the help of the secular arm;

that is, to cause the civil authority to put them to death.

* * * * * *

991.

Also, false and slavish political theories end in brutalizing the State.

992.

For example, adopt the theory that offices and employments in it

are to be given as rewards for services rendered to party,

and they soon become the prey and spoil of faction,

the booty of the victory of faction;

--and leprosy is in the flesh of the State.

993.

The body of the commonwealth becomes a mass of corruption,

like a living carcass rotten with syphilis.

994.

All unsound theories, at the end,

develop into one foul and loathsome disease or other of the body politic.

995.

The State, like the man, must use constant effort

to stay in the paths of virtue and manliness.

996.

The habit of electioneering and begging for office

culminates in bribery with office, and corruption in office.

997.

A chosen man has a visible trust from God,

as plainly as if the commission were engrossed by the notary.

998.

A nation cannot renounce the executorship of the Divine decrees.

999.

As little can Masonry.

1000.

It must labor to do its duty knowingly and wisely.

1001.

We must remember that, in free States, as well as in despotisms,

Injustice, the spouse of Oppression,

is the fruitful parent of Deceit, Distrust, Hatred, Conspiracy, Treason, and Unfaithfulness.

1002.

Even in assailing Tyranny

we must have Truth and Reason as our chief weapons.

1003.

We must march into that fight like the old Puritans,

or into the battle with the abuses that spring up in free government,

with the flaming sword in one hand, and the Oracles of God in the other.

1004.

The citizen who cannot accomplish well the smaller purposes of public life,

cannot compass the larger.

1005.

The vast power of endurance, forbearance, patience, and performance, of a free people,

is acquired only by continual exercise of all the functions,

like the healthful physical human vigor.

1006.

If the individual citizens have it not,

the State must equally be without it.

1007.

It is of the essence of a free government,

that the people should not only be concerned in making the laws,

yet also in their execution.

1008.

No man ought to be more ready to obey and administer the law

than he who has helped to make it.

1009.

The business of government is carried on for the benefit of all,

and every co-partner should give counsel and cooperation.

1010.

Remember also, as another shoal on which States are wrecked,

that free States always tend toward the depositing of the citizens in strata,

the creation of castes, the perpetuation of the jus divinurn to office in families.

1011.

The more democratic the State, the more sure this result.

1012.

For, as free States advance in power, there is a strong tendency toward centralization,

not from deliberate evil intention,

yet from the course of events and the indolence of human nature.

1013.

The executive powers swell and enlarge to inordinate dimensions;

and the Executive is always aggressive with respect to the nation.

1014.

Offices of all kinds are multiplied to reward partisans;

the brute force of the sewerage and lower strata of the mob obtains large representation,

first in the lower offices, and at last in Senates;

and Bureaucracy raises its bald head,

bristling with pens, girded with spectacles, and bunched with ribbon.

1015.

The art of Government becomes like a Craft,

and its guilds tend to become exclusive, as those of the Middle Ages.

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Divisions 1016-1045

MORALS & DOGMA 2

1016.

Political science may be much improved as a subject of speculation;

yet it should never be divorced from the actual national necessity.

1017.

The science of governing men must always be practical, rather than philosophical.

1018.

There is not the same amount of positive or universal truth here

as in the abstract sciences;

1019.

what is true in one country may be very false in another;

what is untrue to-day may become true in another generation,

and the truth of to-day be reversed by the judgment of to-morrow.

1020.

To distinguish the casual from the enduring,

to separate the unsuitable from the suitable,

and to make progress even possible,

are the proper ends of policy.

1021.

Yet without actual knowledge and experience, and communion of labor,

the dreams of the political doctors may be no better than those of the doctors of divinity.

1022.

The reign of such a caste, with its mysteries, its myrmidons, and its corrupting influence,

may be as fatal as that of the despots.

1023.

Thirty tyrants are thirty times worse than one.

1024.

Moreover, there is a strong temptation for the governing people

to become as much slothful and sluggards as the weakest of absolute kings.

1025.

Only give them the power to get rid, when caprice prompts them, of the great and wise men,

and elect the little, and as to all the rest they will relapse into indolence and indifference.

1026.

The central power, creation of the people, organized and cunning if not enlightened,

is the perpetual tribunal set up by them for the redress of wrong and the rule of justice.

1027.

It soon supplies itself with all the requisite machinery,

and is ready and apt for all kinds of interference.

1028.

The people may be a child all its life.

1029.

The central power may not be able to suggest the best scientific solution of a problem;

yet it has the easiest means of carrying an idea into effect.

1030.

If the purpose to be attained is a large one, it requires a large comprehension;

it is proper for the action of the central power.

1031.

If it be a small one, it may be thwarted by disagreement.

1032.

The central power must step in as an arbitrator and prevent this.

1033.

The people may be too averse to change,

too slothful in their own business,

unjust to a minority or a majority.

1034.

The central power must take the reins when the people drop them.

1035.

France became centralized in its government

more by the apathy and ignorance of its people, than by the tyranny of its kings.

1036.

When the inmost parish-life is given up to the direct guardianship of the State,

and the repair of the belfry of a country church requires a written order from the central power,

a people is in its dotage.

1037.

Men are thus nurtured in imbecility, from the dawn of social life.

1038.

When the central government feeds part of the people it prepares all to be slaves.

1039.

When it directs parish and county affairs, they are slaves already.

1040.

The next step is to regulate labor and its wages.

1041.

Nevertheless, whatever follies the free people may commit,

even to the putting of the powers of legislation in the hands of the little competent and less honest,

despair not of the final result.

1042.

The terrible teacher, EXPERIENCE,

writing his lessons on hearts desolated with calamity and wrung by agony,

will make thelll wiser in time.

1043.

Pretence and grimace and sordid beggary for votes

will one day cease to avail.

1044.

Have FAITH, and struggle on,

against all evil influences and discouragements!

1045.

FAITH is the Saviour and Redeemer of nations.

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Divisions 1046-1070

MORALS & DOGMA 2

1046.

When Christianity had grown weak, profitless, and powerless,

the Arab Restorer and Iconoclast came, like a cleansing hurricane.

1047.

When the battle of Damascus was about to be fought,

the Christian bishop, at the early dawn, in his robes, at the head of his clergy,

with the Cross once so triumphant raised in the air,

came down to the gates of the city, and laid open the Testament of Christ before the army.

1048.

The Christian general, THOMAS, laid his hand on the book, and said,

" Oh God! If our faith be true, aid us,

and deliver us not into the hands of its enemies! "

1049.

Yet KHALED, " the Sword of God, " who had marched from victory to victory,

exclaimed to his wearied soldiers,

" Let no man sleep!

1050.

There will be rest enough in the bowers of Paradise;

sweet will be the repose never more to be followed by labor. "

1051.

The faith of the Arab had become stronger than that of the Christian,

and he conquered.

1052.

The Sword is also, in the Bible, an emblem of SPEECH,

or of the utterance of thought.

1053.

Thus, in that vision or apocalypse of the sublime exile of Patmos,

a protest in the name of the ideal, overwhelming the real world,

1054.

a tremendous satire uttered in the name of Religion and Liberty,

and with its fiery reverberations smiting the throne of the Caesars,

1055.

a sharp two-edged sword comes out of the mouth of the Semblance of the Son of Man,

encircled by the seven golden candlesticks, and holding in his right hand seven stars.

1056.

" The Lord, " says Isaiah, " hath made my mouth like a sharp sword. "

1057.

" I have slain them, " says Hosea, " by the words of my mouth. "

1058.

" The word of God, " says the writer of the apostolic letter to the Hebrews,

" is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,

piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit. "

1059.

" The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, "

says Paul, writing to the Christians at Ephesus.

1060.

" I will fight against them with the sword of my mouth, "

it is said in the Apocalypse, to the angel of the church at Pergamos.

* * * * * *

1061.

The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal wave;

yet, like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands.

1062.

It is heard by few, remembered by still fewer,

and fades away, like an echo in the mountains, leaving no token of power.

1063.

It is nothing to the living and coming generations of men.

1064.

It was the written hulman speech,

that gave power and permanence to human thought.

1065.

It is this that makes the whole human history just one individual life.

1066.

To write on the rock is to write on a solid parchment;

yet it requires a pilgrimage to see it.

1067.

There is only one copy,

and Time wears even that.

1068.

To write on skins or papyrus was to give, as it were,

yet one tardy edition, and the rich only could procure it.

1069.

The Chinese stereotyped not only the unchanging wisdom of oid sages,

yet also the passing events.

1070.

The process tended to suffocate thought, and to hinder progress;

for there is continual wandering in the wisest minds,

and Truth writes her last words, not on clean tablets,

yet on the scrawl that Error has made and often mended.

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Divisions 1071-1100

MORALS & DOGMA 2

1071.

Printing made the movable letters prolific.

1072.

Thenceforth the orator spoke almost visibly to listening nations;

and the author wrote, like the Pope, his cecumenic decrees urbi et orbi,

and ordered them to be posted up in all the market-places;

remaining, if he chose, impervious to human sight.

1073.

The doom of tyrannies was thenceforth sealed.

1074.

Satire and invective (reviling) became potent as armies.

1075.

The unseen hands of the Juniuses could launch the thunderbolts,

and make the ministers tremble.

1076.

One whisper from this giant fills the earth as easily as Demosthenes filled the Agora.

1077.

It will soon be heard at the antipodes as easily as in the next street.

1078.

It travels with the lightning under the oceans.

1079.

It makes the mass one man, speaks to it in the same common language,

and elicits a sure and single response.

1080.

Speech passes into thought, and thence promptly into act.

1081.

A nation becomes truly one, with one large heart and a single throbbing pulse.

1082.

Men are invisibly present to each other, as if already spiritual beings;

and the thinker who sits in an Alpine solitude,

unknown to or forgotten by all the world, among the silent herds and hills,

may flash his words to all tlle cities and over all the seas.

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