Also Representatives of other Supreme Councils near this Grand East, as follows: Ill... CHARLES LEVI WOODBURY, Representative of the Supreme Council for Ill.. BENJAMIN DEAN, Representative of the Supreme Council for Ireland. Ill.. GEORGE W. DEERING, Representative of the Supreme Council for Ill.. D. BURNHAM TRACY, Representative of the Supreme Council for Canada. Ill.. ALBERT P. MORIARTY, Representative of the Supreme Council for Colon, Cuba and West India Islands. The M.. P.. Sov.. Gr.. Commander appointed Ill... BENJAMIN F. NOURSE as Gr.. Seneschal for the Session. The transactions of last Annual Session having been printed and distributed to the members, the reading thereof was, on motion of Ill.. Bro.. DOYLE dispensed with. The M.. P.. Sov.. Gr... Commander then delivered the following ILLUSTRIOUS BRETHREN : ANNUAL ADDRESS. The year that has gone from us, since we last separated, has not carried with it any active or emeritus member of the Supreme Council; but of our Illustrious Brethren, the Honorary Members, eight have received and obeyed their final summons, viz: PHINEAS D. BALLOU, formerly of Vermont. WENDELL THORNTON DAVIS, of Massachusetts. SAMUEL KNOX HUTCHINSON, WILLIAM ELLISON, DANIEL W. WYMAN, of New Jersey. KENT JARVIS, of Ohio. 86 66 ERASTUS W. H. ELLIS, of Indiana, and WILLIAM S. PATRICK, formerly of Michigan, but at the time of his death a resident of Minnesota. I had the mournful satisfaction of uniting with the Brethren of New Jersey in paying the funeral honors to the memory of Ill.. BRO. WYMAN. The Brethren of Vermont have transmitted to me resolutions to the memory of BRO. BALLOU for publication in the proceedings, and they are herewith submitted. A memoir of Ill.. BRO. ELLIS has also been forwarded to me, and one of Ill.. BRO. JARVIS is contained in the proceedings of the Ohio Council of Deliberation-both herewith submitted. The active members in the other jurisdictions will take such action as they deem proper in respect to their honored dead. CONDITION OF THE RITE. The depression in business, the excitement of the Presidential election, the Centennial celebration, and the present furor for mutual relief by a system of benefits and dues, which has caused organizations founded upon that principle to spring up like mushrooms all over the country, have all tended to prevent the doing of much work during the past year; but I am able to report the general prevalence of a healthful prosperity, and, in several jurisdictions, a fair growth. This partially inactive condition of the Rite has made my duties lighter during the year, and I have but very little to present for your consideration. CHARTERS AND DISPENSATIONS. The bodies to which charters were granted last year have been duly organized. The Council of Princes of Jerusalem, U. D., at Lancaster, Penn., requests to have its dispensation renewed. I have granted but one dispensation for a new body during the year—for a Lodge of Perfection at Columbus, Ohio. In accordance with the vote of the Supreme Council at the last session, after corresponding with members of Carson Lodge of Perfection, at Detroit, and they making no objection thereto, I authorized Allegan Lodge of Perfection to remove to Detroit and change its name to Detroit Lodge of Perfection. The removal has been consummated, and the Lodge has commenced work with very favorable prospects. At the last session, the charters of the bodies at Kalamazoo were revoked for failure to make returns and pay dues. I herewith submit a memorial from Ill.. BRO. JOHN D. JENNINGS and others, praying for the restoring of the charters of the Chapter and Consistory, and their removal to Grand Rapids, where there is a flourishing Lodge and Council. Under the recent standing regulation, on November 20, 1876, I suspended the charter of St. John's Lodge of Perfection, at Newark, New Jersey, for non-payment of dues; the charter has since been surrendered. On the same day, and for the same cause, I suspended the charters of Fort Wayne Consistory, Fort Wayne Chapter, Fort Wayne Council, and Fort Wayne Lodge of Perfection, all at Fort Wayne, Indiana. I see no reason why these charters should not be revoked. REPORTS OF DEPUTIES AND COUNCILS OF DELIBERATION. I have the reports of the Ill.. Deputies for Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. Councils of Deliberation have been held in Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois, of which the proceedings have been printed; and in Connecticut, the proceedings of which are given in the report of the Ill.. Deputy. These reports and proceedings are herewith submitted. FOREIGN RELATIONS. Our foreign relations continue harmonious. Our course in relation to the Lausanne Congress has prevented our being involved in the exciting and almost angry discussions which have grown out of its action. SOUTHERN JURISDICTION, U. S. A. Although the session of the Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction was held in May, 1876, its proceedings had not been published when we met a year ago. As these proceedings are forwarded to us by the Grand Secretary General H.. E.. of that Jurisdiction, they are to be regarded as official communications, so far as they contain matters pertaining to us. I desire to quote from the "Allocution" of Ill.. BRO. PIKE, M... P. ·. Sov. ·. Gr.. Commander, in relation to the action of the Congress at Lausanne, showing that our fears that it might assume powers not granted to it and dangerous to the individual Supreme Councils, were but too well founded: "I thought that, but for the grave wrong done us, by a decision which the Congress was incompetent to make, we could have acceded to the Confederation, with reservations as to Articles III. and XII. But a little reflection would have convinced me that we could not do so, until Article iii. should have been expunged. Our Sister Council of the Northern Jurisdiction declined to send Delegates to Lausanne, chiefly because it believed that if a Confederation were formed, the Congresses would, by gradual accretion of powers, in the end become a Central Legislative and Judicial Power, destructive of the independence and sovereignty of the Supreme Councils; and we had authorized no one to suppose that we should ever consent to the exercise of any power by a Congress, unless such power had first been specifically conferred upon it by the Supreme Councils composing the Confederation. I think we are all agreed as to that. We have never thought of creating a Central Government over us and other Supreme Councils; and if we had supposed that there was the least danger that such a Government would be created, we should, I am quite sure, have declined to have lot or part in the matter. We are not ready to become subordinates of a Central Power, or to receive and register the Edicts of a Master in the shape of a Pouvoir Executif. "If we had no wrong to complain of, I should say, therefore, that we ought not to accede to the Confederation, until Article iii. should have been expunged, and an article of a tenor precisely contrary to it substituted in its place. It gives to the Congresses powers limited only by their own discretion. Whatever they may think fit or needful to be done, they may do. We, I think, should decline to accede to any League, without an unchangeable provision that no Congress should exercise any power not distinctly and by express grant conferred upon it. For, without such a fundamental and unalterable disposition, we should utterly denude ourselves of Sovereignty and Supremacy." * "But it was when the Supreme Council of Scotland invited our consideration of its objections to the Manifesto of Principles, and when I was furnished with the text of the revision of the Grand Constitutions, that I felt and saw that our accession to the Confederation was impossible. "Art. II. § 4 of the Grand Constitutions revise continues the life-tenure of members of the Supreme Councils; but Article III. changes the law in regard to the life-tenure of office, limiting the term of office of all officers of Supreme Councils to nine years; and § 2 of this article would require you to re-elect all your officers within the term of nine years from the promulgation of the revision and of the instrument of confederation. "Art. V. § 1, limits the number of active members of a Supreme Council to thirty. "Article X. provides that no Sovereign Grand Inspector General can, of his private authority, confer any degree or deliver any diploma or patent. "Article XI. in part re-enacting that article of the original Grand Constitutions, would annul all our Grand and Particular Consistories and Councils of Kadosh, because, under it, neither the 32d, 31st, or 30th degrees can be conferred except in the presence of three Soverign Grand Inspectors General, or of one, having the written and special approbation of two others. "Articles XII. XIII. and XVI, of the Ancient Constitutions are abrogated; and the other articles, as revised, are declared to have the force of law, with all the obediences of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. 66 "For us to accept this revision as law, would be to annul our most important statutes, to become bound to meet every three months, to exterminate many of our bodies, and to accept an organic law in which we would have no power to re-enact any change that we have already made, or any other that might be found necessary; and we cannot accede to the Confederation without accepting this new supreme law, and making these changes. And we should, also, by our accession, admit that the Congress has the supreme legislative power, without which it could not revise the Grand Constitutions, abrogate them in part, and give to its work the force of law. |