Memoirs of John Adams Dix; comp. by his son, Morgan Dix.

112 MEMOIRS OF JOHN ADAMS DIX.
to for a refutation of the assertion. The institution has enjoyed, in a
quiet and inoffensive way, its idle mysticisms. We look upon it with no
very friendly prepossessions; on the contrary, we have always deemed it
a mere collection of formalities, unworthy the very time expended on
them. But on this point we acknowledge our profound ignorance; and,
in doing so, we might, but for a reluctance to give pledges with regard
to our future course in life, even go farther, and unite with a fallen politician in saying that we 'never shall be a Mason.' But the time, we
trust, is long past when the guilt of a few members of any society is to
draw along with it the condemnation and punishment of all the others.
It is one of the characteristics of an enlightened age to separate the
innocent and the guilty, to distinguish between individuals and the
societies or institutions of which they chance to be members. It is the
province of ignorance and barbarism to punish the individual by annihilating the mass, to retribute particular guilt by general condemnation.
The abduction of Morgan is unquestionably, as to all the guilty, a remove
from the refinements and charities of the age toward the rudeness and
barbarism of ages which are past. To visit that act with indiscriminate
punishment would be a similar remove on the part of the whole community. That such will be our course we are not yet prepared to believe: that such a doctrine can long be even covertly propagated we do
not believe. The whole matter of Morgan, as a moral question, resolves
itself into a case of great simplicity. An outrage has been committed
against the laws, which have appointed the penalty and prescribed the
method of investigation. If they are inadequate, in this case, to detect
the authors, it is the result of that imperfection in which all human institutions participate; and it is to be remembered that far more atrocious
deeds of violence and cruelty have eluded forever the researches of man,
and are reserved for that final retribution which no device of art, no
bond of secrecy, can escape.
"Second, as a political question. As long as the efforts of Antimasonry were honestly directed to the detection and exposure of a crime
and the punishment of its perpetrators, it was purely a moral question.
But in the course of its progress it has assumed a totally different complexion, not only by means of new elements combined with it, but by
means of the new objects which it proposes for attainment; and it has
now become entirely a political question. It is almost unnecessary to
trace the influences by which this excitement has been gradually converted, from a virtuous and disinterested, into a base and personal impulse. The history of all free governments, in which great results are to
be produced by acting upon public opinion, is prolific in instances of the
same nature. There is always a body of disappointed individuals, the