No. 16, VOL. 12.] LONDON, Friday, Oct. 21, 1825. [PRICE 6d.

A CHARGE TO THE WHOLE FRATERNITY OF FREEMASONS.

DELUDED BRETHREN,

ONE of the Grand Architects of the Universe is about to charge you, to mend your manners and to increase your knowledge, I AM THAT I AM, and you are that you are— all noodles. To order, Noodles, whilst I open the grand lodge of the universe, to shew you the true secrets of Masonry in an improved book of Revelations. Holy Saint John was a drunken blockbead and has not left you a revelation worth a moment's attention. Mine is to be one end. less stream of masonic light, that is to shine from the east to the west, and from the north to the south, or, in scripture phrase, to the four corners of a globe! Hereafter, you will want neither artificial nor allegorical lights: you will find my revelation a thorough illumination, and superior to the Holy Law. Your Holy Law is an expiring tallow rushlight, which I AM THAT I AM means to puff out. Yes, Noodles, I swear by Jao-bul-on, by the holy word and triangular grip of a Royal Arch Mason, that I will put out all your lights and light up the first year of light with the last of Christianity. I will make a taper of the last Annus Domini, to set fire to the first Annus Lucis. Then, the world will be on fire, then will have arrived that prophesied period, when speculative Masonry is to have its end. So mote it be.

My new lodge is open to the brethren of all the degrees, from the entered apprentice to the ne plus ultra, and here you shall find a revelation of all the secrets at one initiation, aud that without being made naked, hoodwinked, marched, cable-towed, tiled or obligated: for a very small fee and no subsequent quarterly payments, no lodge-night payments, no grand lodge fees, no badges, no sashes, no swords, no robes, no fool's caps.

Printed and Published by R. Carlile, 135, Fleet Street.

Now, brethren, I have proved to the Masonic and to the -uninitiated world, that there has not been a secret among masons of the least value to them: that the whole masonic system is a deception from the beginning to the end. What is gained, by being able to pronounce in syllables, Boaz Jachin, Shibboleth, Tubal-Cain, Macbenach, Giblum, and - Jao-bul-on? What is gained by a knowledge how to grip the two joints and their hollows, and the wrist of the hand, or to be able to form a triangular grip, by the wrists, with two other Royal Arch Masons? What is gained by a knowledge of your penal and other signs? What, but folly? What but expence? What, but waste of time and means, that might be so much better employed?

It is monstrous, to see the legislators and the magistrates, of the land associating for such a purpose. It is an outrage upon the nation. It is monstrous, to see an establishment in London, with officers at salaries of four or five hundred pounds a year, to correspond with and to connect the country lodges. These are the affiliated societies which the legislator should put down. These are a scandal and a mischief to the otherwise intelligent character of this country.

The Exmouth Lodge lately voted five pounds to the Greeks, with an expression of good wishes for their success. As soon as the circumstance was made public, a reprimand was received from the London Grand Secretary and a mandate, that even Greek Politics were not to be meddled with! What then is the association of Freemasons, under the authority of such a Grand Lodge? What, but a set of Tom-fools, as my pretty Nottinghain correspondent calls her husband and his "Odd Fellows," who meet in a room, with affected secresy, to practise the more ridiculous part of the play of children, and who, by such private meetings, with the perverted passions of manhood, must feel a growing disposition for the most foul debaucheries, that are necessarily private. Such debaucheries are the natural effect of such private associations of men. They have been common in all those religious institutions where females have been excluded and sexual intercourse denounced. And though Masonry does not interfere with the last point, Masonic intercourse with females is denounced, which is a first step to viler purposes. There can be nothing good in society, of any kind, from which females are necessarily excluded.

Here, we have the Duke of Sussex, who is a Masonic Knight Templar, who is their Grand Master, and who, of

course, affects to admire the purpose for which the original Knights associated, condemning the act of a five pounds subscription to the Greeks, the only Christian people now oppressed by the Turks, and struggling to emancipate themselves from that oppression. The Secretary could only have sent down the reprimand and mandate to Exmouth, by the order or with the sanction of the Grand Master. This, your Masonic chivalry, is it? You must have sadly degenerated or be originally base. I have a masonic charge in my possession, printed at Sheffield, the subject of which is one continued eulogy on Thomas Paine and his Rights of Man'. Ah! this must have been the reason why all politicswere excluded from Masonic lodges. The chivalry of modern Masonry is a trick on the part of the Royal Family, to exclude the discussion of such topics as this eulogy on Paine this struggle of the Greeks for republicanism. Republicanism is the devil of monarchy; and monarchy is both the hell and the devil of republicanism. Such frivolities, as those of which modern masonry is a compound, tally well with the general principles of monarchy. They form a sort of second hand aristocracy, and, in some measure, resemble the manners of those livery servants, who accost each other under the names and titles of their masters. Masonry has no identification with liberty, with freedom of mind, or of mental research; it is a compound of trick, fraud and slavery. Instead of a fervency and zeal for freedom and the improvement of the condition of the human race, we find it endeavouring to rivet all those bad habits, those customs and those prejudices, which enslave man and make him poor, spiritless, and miserable.

The history of Freemasonry is evidently this:-It began as a trade association, and, in this sense, might possibly extend beyond all existing records, as we have relics and ruins as monuments of the most splendid masonic art, where we bave no records of their history or origin, nor even of the last persons who inhabited them, nor by whom they were destroyed. Therefore, of the origin of masonry, in its practical character, the wiser course will be to say nothing. To trace it to Solomon, to Noah or to Adam, is only to specu late upon fables, evident fables. To trace it to a grand architect of the universe, is to rest upon a similarly evident fable. The sciences of astronomy and chemistry prove incontestibly, that no such a grand architect has existed, and that matter, as a whole, has been the only architect of its natural identities. By the grand architect of the universe,

among masons, we are led to infer an intelligent being, or a being with sensations, such or similar to those which we possess and some religionists, who know not what matter is, tell us, that he created matter out of nothing, himself, of course, first; and the old school maxim, ex nihilo nibil fit, or, out of nothing, nothing can be made, is with them, irreligious and blasphemous. They blaspheme the little knowledge that does exist among mankind, and punish as blasphemers of their nonsense, those who desire to rest upon truth, upon facts and realities instead of phantoms. They first make a god like themselves, and then they make a universe, a history and a nature of things to suit their first error. All error springs from that one source of making a God through ignorance and fear, through the ignorance of fear and the fear arising from ignorance.

Taking matter as a whole, sensationless matter as the grand architect and grand destroyer of its natural identities, we rest upon facts which we behold and beyond which we cannot carry,our knowledge. Upon this ground, we need no devil, uo counter power, as the necessary destroyer of those identities, and we are saved the outrage of imputing to a being, whom we would feign all power, all wisdom, all goodness, the creation of evil to the sensations of animals, and of an author of that evil the devil. This is an outrage which no religionist can calmly defend, and though we have no tradition that the devil was ever fool enough to intrude himself among masons, to become a mason, as he intrudes himself among all other religious people, we may be assured, from what we have read in their prayers and other ceremonies that masons neither renounce nor defy the devil.

So, it will be seen to be wise, to confine the history of masonry to the real history of mankind, and not to give it a fabulous antiquity. It is, in reality, more ancient than any fable can make it, and that admission ought to satisfy those strange beings, who have neither taste nor value for any thing that is not antique. The materialists will give you an eternity for antiquity, if you can make out an eternity when you have it granted.

Formerly, signs and pass words were very common among trades and the qualifications of the workmen were distinguished by them. The practice is scarcely extinct in Germany and in other parts of the continent. This consideration will bring us to the eighteenth, or, if you like, to the seventeenth century, the origin of speculative ma

sonry.

The first existence of speculative masonry, that masons or others attempt to shew, is an association for party politics, in the seventeenth century. A record exists, that a Mr. Ashmole and another Royalist attached to Charles the First, were initiated about the beginning of the civil war between Charles and the Parliament. A French writer has asserted that Cromwell instituted an association of masons for his aggrandizement, and narrates circumstances, even table talk, which surprises me, that we should have to read it first from the pen of a Frenchman. The Stuart family are said to have organized a similar association, both in England and on the Continent, for their restoration, of which Charles the Second was the head and chief. Intended, at first, for banished or travelling Englishmen and Scotchmen, foreigners, or the inhabitants where the ledges were held, were eventually admitted, and subsequently perpetuated the system on the coutinent, until now, we find the vile King of Spain hanging half a dozen of them. Finch roundly asserts, and there is a probability, that Charles the Second added, or introduced into this country, the Royal Arch Degree as a degree for the Aristocracy, and a sort of distinction from the working characters of apprentice, craftsman and master.

The Stuarts, a second time banished, again resorted to the aid of masonry for their second restoration, and here it is, that we find the second revival of speculative masonry, that has assumed its present state in England and Scotland, and which produced such tremendous consequences on the continent. The restoration of the Stuarts was never relinquished by the Roman Catholics of the continent and of England and Ireland, and by others their partisans in England and Scotland, until the French Revolution: and hardly then. If there be a branch of the family left, we may be assured, that that branch retains notious of restoration; and probabilities are quite as favourable to them, as they were twenty years ago to the Bourbons of France andother places. I have no idea that masonry is now encouraged under such views, but rather, that, by being espoused by the present royal family, it has taken an opposite turn. All royal families grow odious in the eyes of the people. It is in the nature of things that it should be so. Their private as well their public vices become matters of common and interesting anecdote among the people, and hatred is the inevitable consequence. The public good which may be cried up is a flimsy support that veils nothing in reality