tted for any causes to elect its officers or
any of them on the constitutional night of election, or if any officer so
elected shall have died, been deposed or removed from the jurisdiction
subsequent to his election, the Grand Master may issue a dispensation
empowering the lodge to proceed to an election or to fill the vacancy at
any other specified communication; but he cannot grant a dispensation to
elect a new master in consequence of the death or removal of the old one,
while the two Wardens or either of them remain--because the Wardens
succeed by inherent right and in order of seniority to the vacant
mastership. And, indeed, it is held that while one of the three officers
remains, no election can be held, even by dispensation, to fill the other
two places, though vacancies in them may have occurred by death or
removal.

4. The Grand Master may grant a dispensation empowering a lodge to elect
a Master from among the members on the floor; but this must be done only
when every Past Master, Warden, and Past Warden of the lodge has refused
to serve,[16] because ordinarily a requisite qualification for the
Mastership is, that the candidate shall, previously, have served in the
office of Warden.

5. In the year 1723 a regulation was adopted, prescribing "that no Brother
should belong to more than one lodge within the bills of mortality."
Interpreting the last expression to mean three miles--which is now
supposed to be the geographical limit of a lodge's jurisdiction, this
regulation may still be considered as a part of the law of Masonry; but in
some Grand Lodges, as that of South Carolina, for instance, the Grand
Master will sometimes exercise his prerogative, and, dispensing with this
regulation, permit a Brother to belong to two lodges, although they may be
within three miles of each other.

6. But the most important power of the Grand Master connected with his
dispensing prerogative is, that of constituting new lodges. It has
already been remarked that, anciently, a warrant was not required for the
formation of a lodge, but that a sufficient number of Masons, met together
within a certain limit, were empowered, with the consent of the sheriff or
chief magistrate of the place, to make Masons and practice the rites of
Masonry, without such warrant of Constitution. But, in the year 1717, it
was adopted as a regulation, that every lodge, to be thereafter convened,
should be authorised to act by a warrant from the Grand