Difference between revisions of "SalemProtest1831"

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SALEM PROTEST, NOVEMBER 7, 1831

In November 1831, a number of Masons on the North Shore issued the following Protest and affirmation, and attached their names to the document, as listed below. This document precedes the more well-known Declaration of the Masons of Boston and Vicinity by nearly two months.

From Masonic Mirror, New Series, Vol. III, No. 20, November 1831, Page 1:

PROTEST

The undersigned, members of the Masonic Associations in this vicinity, having, many of us, taken all the degrees of Masonry that are conferred in the Lodges and Chapters of New England, and some of us having been admitted into what are called the higher orders of Masonry, feel constrained, by what we deem our duty to the public and ourselves, in consequence of the excitements existing around us on the subject of Freemasonry, solemnly to declare –

That the sole object of all the obligations, pledges, rites and laws of the Masonic Institution, as we have taken, understood, practised, and enforced them, is the promotion of morality, virtue, and piety; the promotion of all these qualities of the head and heart, which constitute good men – good as citizens of their country and of the world; good in all the social relations and offices of life; – and that the statement of the anti-Masonic party to the contrary are unjust and untrue.

That the principles of the Masonic Institution have had their full beneficial effect on their own lives, the undersigned do not assert; neither do they say that they have never been perverted, but they do say that they believe them to be not more liable to perversion, and that they never have been perverted to the injury of the public, either in this or any other country, more frequently than the institutions of Religion itself; and that, on the whole, Freemasonry has been productive of much more good than evil to every community in which it has flourished.

Conscientiously entertaining these views of the subject, and having received the laws of the society, and its accumulated funds in sacred trust for charitable uses, they can neither renounce nor abandon it. And should the people of this country become so infatuated as to deprive Masons of their civil rights, in violation of their written constitutions, and the whole spirit of just laws and free governments, they trust a vast majority of the fraternity will still remain firm, confiding in God and the rectitude of their intentions for consolation, under the trials to which they may be exposed.

The undersigned claim no exclusive privilege, no exception from punishment when proved guilty of crimes, no immunity from the just reward which an injured community bestows on evil doers, when, by their own deeds, it can be shown that they are such, but they protest against being adjudged guilty of crimes committed by others, or crimes imagined to be the consequence of their Masonic principles.

Finally, we most solely affirm that we know of no obligation or principles in Masonry that required duties of its members incompatible with the laws of the land, or contrary to our moral or religious duty to man, our country, or our God.

SALEM

DANVERS

MARBLEHEAD

BEVERLY