y a man has been
saved from pecuniary ruin by getting his property insured, and many a
man has secured a competence for his wife and children by getting his
life insured. Individuals and families have probably been oftener
saved from worldly ruin by insurance companies than by secret
societies. The association of A, B, and C may do some good. They have
a right to agree to aid one another. They may, perhaps, have a right
to say that D, E, and F, who are very poor, or are enfeebled by
disease, shall not join them, and shall not be aided by them; but they
have no right to represent their exclusive, selfish association as a
charitable one. Such a representation would be false, and the
wickedness of making it wholly inexcusable. We do not blame
Odd-fellows, Good-fellows, Druids, or any other association for acting
as mutual insurance companies. We do not blame them for agreeing that
they will take care of each other or of each other's families. We are
not now blaming them for excluding from their associations and from
"the benefits" disbursed by them, the blind, the lame, the diseased,
and the very poor who have no means of support, though this feature of
such associations does seem very repulsive. We are not now condemning
them for casting off all those who do not pay their "dues," those who
become very poor and can not as well as the rich who will not, and for
cutting off all such persons from all "benefits of whatsoever kind,"
though such treatment does seem to us selfish, cruel, and mean; we do
not now arraign them for any of these things, however ungenerous,
exclusive, and selfish they appear to us, but we do say that any
association which thus practices, and professes, and calls itself a
charitable one is a cheat and a sham. Those secret societies which
glorify themselves on account of their charities and universal
brotherhood and benevolence, can be acquitted of willful deceit and
falsehood only on the ground that they are blinded by prejudice or
ignorance, or both.

The pretentious character of secret associations appears, also, in
their claims to be the possessors and disseminators of knowledge and
morality. Their members seem to think a man can scarcely be good and
intelligent without being "initiated." Webb delares [sic] "Masonry is
a progressive science. * * Masonry includes within its circle almost
every branch of polite learning." (Monitor, p. 53.) "Masonry is not
only the most ancient, but the most moral inst