cussed within the last few years
by several of the Grand Lodges of the United States.

In 1847, the Grand Lodge of Alabama adopted the following regulation,
which had been previously enacted by the Grand Lodge of Tennessee:

"Any person residing within the jurisdiction of this Grand Lodge, who has
already, or shall hereafter, travel into any foreign jurisdiction, and
there receive the degrees of Masonry, such person shall not be entitled to
the rights, benefits, and privileges of Masonry within this jurisdiction,
until he shall have been regularly admitted a member of the subordinate
lodge under this Grand Lodge, nearest which he at the time resides, in the
manner provided by the Constitution of this Grand Lodge for the admission
of members."

The rule adopted by the Grand Lodge of Maryland is still more stringent.
It declares, "that if any individual, from selfish motives, from distrust
of his acceptance, or other causes originating in himself, knowingly and
willfully travel into another jurisdiction, and there receive the masonic
degrees, he shall be considered and held as a clandestine made Mason."

The Grand Lodge of New York, especially, has opposed these regulations,
inflicting a penalty on the initiate, and assigns its reasons for the
opposition in the following language:

"Before a man becomes a Mason, he is subject to no law which any Grand
Lodge can enact. No Grand Lodge has a right to make a law to compel any
citizen, who desires, to be initiated in a particular lodge, or in the
town or State of his residence; neither can any Grand Lodge forbid a
citizen to go where he pleases to seek acceptance into fellowship with the
craft; and where there is no right to compel or to forbid, there can be no
right to punish; but it will be observed, that the laws referred to were
enacted to punish the citizens of Maryland and Alabama, as Masons and
Brethren, for doing something before they were Masons and Brethren, which
they had a perfect right to do as citizens and freemen; and it must
certainly be regarded as an act of deception and treachery by a young
Mason, on returning home, to be told, that he is 'a clandestine Mason,'
that he 'ought to be expelled,' or, that he cannot be recognized as a
Brother till he 'joins a lodge where his residence is,' because he was
initiated in New York, in England, or in France, after having heard all
his life of the universality and oneness of the institution."[77]

It seems to us th