When the Mathematician de Morgan set out to collect the paradoxes of mathematics his first plan was to publish them in a booklet or possibly in a brochure, but by the time he had finished he filled two large volumes and only wished that he had more to use. If a Masonic author were to collect the paradoxes in Masonic Parliamentary Law he would have a similar experience. A paradox is anything which in appearance cannot be true, and yet which is true. Our Parliamentary Law is one of the largest of Masonic subjects and is equal in importance to Lodges, Constitutions, Landmarks, and Ritual yet only a handful of books have ever been written about it; they have been small in size, meager in content, and hard to find even Mackey's work, the one classic among them, is out of print at the time of writing (but doubtless will be republished). Why is it that on a subject so large our literature is so silent? It is a paradox.
Any Mason, and especially any Worshipful Master (who must continually use it), will take that law to be little more than a set of club rules if he glances at it superficially, yet in almost every Masonic case thus far tried in the civil courts the judges have raised the question of our Parliamentary Law first, and before going into the evidence, because few things in Masonry are more important in the eyes of Civil Courts. In Lodge and Grand Lodge Communications nothing done is official, legal, or binding unless it is done according to Parliamentary Law, yet the phrase is seldom mentioned and it is never taught in Lodges and Grand Lodges. Through one of those oversights which are found in the oldest and largest of governmental systems of every sort, they have no Office of Parliamentarian they do not even have an expert Parliamentarian as does the National Congress.
Our Parliamentary Law is a mirror of our history. In detail that law consists of a rule here and a usage there, almost any one of them short enough to be stated in a phrase, yet each one of these details is a crystallization of a whole chapter of history; a paleontologist can construct a whole dinosaur out of a fragment of its jaw, similarly an expert in historical research could re-write the anatomy of our Craft history out of our Parliamentary rules; Parliamentary Law is thus a major theme for our historians, yet when the writer of this paragraph reviewed the tables of contents of a complete collection of Masonic histories he could not find a chapter and scarcely a page on the subject, and this is one of the greatest of the paradoxes!
Even the name of this system by which bodies of Masons must regulate their actions is an etymologic puzzle, and apparently is in contradiction with itself; for a Lodge is not a parliament, or even similar to one, and that which is called "Law" is not law but only a set of rules; nevertheless Lodges, as well as parliaments themselves, must observe parliamentary practices, and the rules, though they are nothing but rules, and are private to Freemasonry itself, are enforced by Freemasonry in obedience to the demands and commands of the civil laws of the state.
The rules themselves, as already said, are short and are simple, are in their form almost trifling, and in their use escape attention. Yet in their purpose and effect they are Freemasonry's only guarantee that in its Lodges and Grand Lodges the greatest purposes can be secured. It is they which uphold justice, establish equity, maintain peace and harmony, protect the right (and rights also) and protect against wrongs, and alone make a Lodge regular, legal, just, lawful, orderly, and civilized, so that without them no Lodge could continue to exist as long as six months. This contrast of Parliamentary Laws in their size and appearance with the work effected by them is amazing as amazing as the lack of attention which they have received; and when any Mason finds and realizes this for himself he discovers himself in possession of an emotional paradox. He has come upon a Cinderella in the House of Masonry, and if he feels an impulse to help her hunt for her glass slipper he ought to do it; there is a Prince close at hand and his coach is not made out of a pumpkin.
Also there is the paradox that when set forth or stated in its abstract and verbal form Masonic Parliamentary Law is as dry as flour, and as colorless, yet whenever it is at issue in any practice or action it is exciting, provocative, and full of electric shocks. This is an old secret of the arts and sciences. A text on geometry or a hand book on mechanics can be as dull, and dreary, and full of drudgery as counting the grains of sand in a sand pile, yet in its actual use geometry is full of inspiring and satisfying emotion, and few things are less dull or more filled with motion and excitement than the actual use of machines. This ancient secret has always been known to masters and experts; they are willing to put in seven dry years of drudgery because there is no other road to glory and surprise the rock gushes water, and the bare branch bursts into bloom. So is it with our Masonic Parliamentary Law; when it stands by itself it stands unnoted, there is no man to desire it, but if a Mason will read his own Grand Lodge Proceedings, especially the Foreign Correspondence Reports in them which are forms of discussion and debate, he will find that same apparently inert Law at the center of things where issues are fought out and Lodge fires burn.
Parliamentary Law is the art of correct procedure. Lodges and Grand Lodges are governed by its rules in the form, time and manner in which many things are done, such as: when, where, to whom, and in what form to make application; how to conduct discussion and debate; how to make motions, or to amend them: the order in which the items of business may be taken up; opening and closing of Lodges; to what Officer a thing may be referred; procedure in reprimand, trials, hearings; the conduct of Committee meetings; the form of Lodge Minutes; Formal Secretarial usages; how to call on or call off; the appointment and announcement of Committees; functions of presiding officers; the use of waivers; the giving, discussion, and disposal of reports; the when and where of actions of a certain kind; the manner of balloting; the forms used in suspensions and reinstatements; forms used in demissions and affiliations; the privileges of the floor; prerogatives and precedence. These, and a hundred other instances, in any given case consist wholly, or in part, of some rule of Parliamentary Law, or some point of it may have a determining or governing function.
An adequate and self consistent definition of Masonic Parliamentary Law may be stated in a sentence: It is a set or system of rules adopted by a Lodge, or Grand Lodge, in order that its activities may conform to the Civil Law where by "Civil Law" is meant the laws of its State or the Nation.
A man does not become a Mason lightly or casually. His becoming a member is an act of self commitment. It costs him money, possibly as much as he earns in two weeks or a month, and it costs him also both time and labor. Freemasonry is an ancient organization with a place of its own in the world which is both known and recognized; its name is not a meaningless label but a descriptive term, and the mere fact that a man is a Mason tells other men many things about him. When as a Petitioner he is examined by a Committee of Investigation, that Committee's first step is to ascertain whether he brings to the Fraternity a good reputation and a sound character, because the Fraternity is entrusting its own good name to his keeping; but at the same time, and by a reciprocal implication he is entrusting his own good name to it. If his Lodge falls into disgrace he is disgraced. If he continues to be and to work in the Lodge year after year he invests much of himself in it, as well as his time and his money; he is entitled to have that investment protected against waste or loss. His dues and his endeavors give him no title to any portion of the Lodge's property but no Lodge could have or acquire property without the dues and endeavors of its members. A man's happiness, pleasure, serenity, peace, friendship, and good will, in a Lodge as everywhere else, are of a higher worth than money or property what can a Lodge mean to a man if they take such things away from him? He himself, inwardly and for the sake of his own spirit, has as much at stake in the order and harmony of the Lodge as the Lodge itself; it is bad if the members fail the Lodge, it is equally bad if a Lodge fails its members. If one member acts unlawfully when in Lodge, other members ought. not to be penalized. In a Lodge as much as at home, or in church, or at work, or anywhere else a man may be slandered, traduced, libeled, affronted, or mocked, and if he has the right to look to the civil law for protection against such evils elsewhere he has the same right to look to it when in Lodge. A Lodge is a private society into which only its own members may come; it convenes behind locked and guarded doors; even the officers of the law cannot enter it while it is in tiled session because their entrance automatically closes it; yet the law is operative in the Lodge, and Parliamentary rules and safeguards are designed to make sure that nothing is clone unlawfully where policemen are not present.
This philosophy of the function of Parliamentary Law in the experiences of any one member can be made both luminous and vivid if we suppose an extreme case an extreme one and yet not impossible, because it has actually occurred more than once. A group of men in a Lodge Room engage in a quarrel; during the quarrel damage is done either to some of the men or to the property; there has been a breach of the peace; and it is carried into the courts. (A docket of Masonic cases in the United States, Canada, Britain, and Europe will show that during the past two centuries cases of this sort have been heard many times.) The first question for the court to decide is a question of Parliamentary Law: Was the Lodge Open at the time or was it not? If the Lodge was Open then the Lodge as a body is the defendant, and if found guilty the Lodge as a body is penalized. But if the Lodge was not Open then the men involved were individually responsible, and they, not the Lodge, must, if guilty, suffer the penalty. It would be difficult to show more clearly how a Parliamentary rule, small and insignificant in itself, may be charged with a large and even a portentous significance; such a rule may not mean each time that a Lodge member is answerable immediately to the Civil Law; he may be answerable to his Lodge, or his Master, or the Grand Lodge, or the Grand Master; nevertheless what he is answerable for, and answerable to whom, always somewhere involves the point or the question of lawfulness, if not directly, then by implication.
This comes home to a Worshipful Master with more weight than to any other member of a Lodge. He is presiding officer, judge, administrator, executive, spokesman; his actions and decisions carry weight; they may involve his whole Lodge or they may deeply affect some one member. What if he makes a mistake? What if disaster is the consequence of his acting or failing to act? To what, and to whom, and in what capacity is he answerable? If while making the decision or taking the action he was acting strictly according to the correct procedure of Parliamentary Law then he is answerable in his capacity as a Worshipful Master, in which case his responsibility is formal, or else the Lodge through him is answerable as a body, in which case its answerableness also is formal. But if when taking the unhappy or disastrous action the Master was acting outside of Masonic Parliamentary Law then neither the office of Master, nor any members, nor the Lodge is answerable; the Master is answerable personally, as a man, in his private capacity. It is not Brother A. B., The Worshipful Master who has done it, but Mr. A. B., the man so great and so decisive is the action of Parliamentary Law wherever it is the point at issue. Nor does the case in a Masonic Lodge exaggerate the point; if when the Senate of the United States acts on a bill it acts in contravention of its own parliamentary rules the bill is officially null and void, for the Senate, as much as any citizen, must act lawfully when it acts.
There is a secret about the secrets of Freemasonry, and every experienced Mason knows what it is: It is that the secrets are of many kinds, and the kind which a Mason encounters depends on where he is at work, on what task he has elected for himself, on what his own interest is. One of those which a student of Freemasonry comes upon, and which gives so much charm to his studies, is the secret that almost nothing in the Craft is what it seems where by "seems" is meant what things appear to be at a rapid or at a casual glance. Parliamentary Law is itself a great case in point, and it is for that reason that we have so many paradoxes about it; but if anything in the whole scope of Freemasonry, and especially among the things which bulk large in it, is not what it seems, it is that portion of a Lodge Communication which is called The Regular Order of Business.
The name itself is one of great peculiarity because a Lodge does not buy or sell anything and therefore is not in business; but if we let that peculiarity pass, and continue to employ the word, we shall have to admit that where business is everywhere else carried on in offices, stores, and behind counters with each man in it employed at some specialized task, "Business" of a Lodge is conducted on the floor, in the open, and every man present may take a part in it. The fact throws a new light on what a "discussion" is, at least in a Masonic Lodge, for while elsewhere a discussion may be a free and informal conversation in which everybody converses on the same subject or the same question in order to pool their thoughts, ideas, and theories, "discussion" in a Lodge is something wholly otherwise; it is, in almost literal fact, a "business," not a round table for talk, and the purpose of it is not to have debate and speeches but to get things done. Furthermore, and here again "discussion" in Lodge differs from discussion elsewhere, it is not free and informal but is formal and goes according to a schedule; and those who take part in it do so not as conversationalists but as members and officers. We ought to be able to say, and without misunderstanding, "by Officers," because Lodge membership is an Office, carries its own title ("Brother"), and has its own powers, prerogatives, rights and privileges. In the "discussion" these Officers (including members) make motions, amend motions, make decisions, rescind previous action, vote, make reports, receive reports, act upon reports, listen to Minutes and correspondence, introduce resolutions; in so doing they are taking action, and in their taking action, the Lodge is taking action, therefore it is not an exaggeration to describe discussion on the floor as a form of "business." And since this is true we come around once again to see both the role and the importance of Parliamentary Law, because the largest single body of rules in it are the rules which regulate discussion on the floor for the purpose of making sure that the Lodge's business, its actions and decisions, shall be official and lawful.
In its own inner reality and in its principle law is everywhere and always. "Thou shall not destroy another." If that which a man is in, that which he does, or what he works in, is such that it gives him the means and incentive to destroy others, or there is in it the danger that he may destroy others, it is said that the law is "in" such a thing. When a government finds the law thus to be "in" something which its citizens are doing, it "declares" the fact, and the various declarations are called "laws." Once it has made such declarations the government has its own officers use force to make sure that citizens do not act unlawfully. There are many kinds of such declarations of the law but the many kinds have as one characteristic in common the fact that the law applies regardless of where a citizen acts, or when he acts. "The law is ubiquitous and everlasting." It cannot be shut out. Its writs run, its voice is heard, its prescriptions hold in solitude, in the privacy of the home, inside the locked office, inside the cells of the jail, in church, as much as on the streets there is no such thing as public law, or social law, or individual law; it is always nothing more or less than the law, and it comes home to a man wherever the man is.
It comes home to a man while he is sitting
inside a Lodge Room, during a Communication, behind closed doors,
as much as it does anywhere. Therefore no Lodge can keep itself
secret from the law, nor does any Lodge either attempt or desire
to do so; on the contrary each and every Lodge is always making
sure, with a never tiring vigilance, that it permits nothing unlawful
to be said or done in any of its assemblies, not only nothing
Masonically unlawful but also nothing which may be in violation
of the civil law. But neither the City nor the State can send
its policemen or its sheriffs to police a Lodge when it is in
session, therefore the Lodge polices itself, and Masonic Parliamentary
Law is the principal means by which it does so.
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