This Morgan Affair.

violations of law can be tolerated by the Order , is equally clear ; nor will the Masonic institution ever secure the permanent favor of the community at large , until their minds are disabused of the prejudices which the unfortunate "Morgan Affair " of 1826 fastened upon them .

Freemasonry In America.

FREEMASONRY IN AMERICA .

LETTER FROM BRO . J . F . BRENNAN . [ Though ive respectfully but entirely dissent from our correspondent ' s views , and think that they are most unjust towards our excellent brethren in Ohioive

, yet think it well , on the principle " audi alteram partem , " to let them appear , as they have reached us from across the Atlantic . The question is a difficult one " per se , " and cannot be decided by violence or abuse .

We are ourselves in favour of recognition , but on submission to the authority of the G . Lodges of the United States , as a practical solution of the difficulty . It is impossible on any grounds , we apprehendto uphold the Masonic legality

, of the so-called Prince Hall G . Lodge ! But the practical question comes in , and like all other earthly difficulties , seems to point to a befitting compromise , which we will venture to elaborate in the next number of the Magazine . —En . ]

Halifax , N . S ., January , 1877 . You have carried my name among your contributors so long without evidence in your pages that I am not a myth , that with this the first month of a new year I feel it incumbent on me to remove theimpresssion ,

if such it has become , in the minds of your readers . And to this end I know of nothing better to form the subject of a letter than the movement made in one of the United States Grand Lodges to recognize the Grand Lodges of Coloured Men "i that country , and ivhich controls to a great extent the manner ot Freemasonrv in this .

THE AFRICAN GRAND LODGE OF THE STATE or OHIO . This was the title proposed by resolution adopted in the greater G . L . of the State of Ohio in 1875 , under ivhich it would recognise the lesser Grand Lodge of Masons in that Statetbe same being

, the first proposed act of recognition of a body of men of colour , known as Freemasons by the white Freemasons in this country . The later war for the Union had been fought and won , and by it tbe coloured manwherever a slave in the

, United States , had become free . The Constitution had been amended by the passage and adoption of a clause , that not only made the coloured man free , but a citizen of his native land , with no distinction to be thenceforth made on account of his race ,

colour , or former condition . In the former Slave States , as in the Free States , Grand Lodges of Freemasons of colour and off colour in the ten years following the war were organized , until not less than twentyfive of their bodies existed , with working lodges more or less in each State . For twenty-five years there had been such a body in Ohio , with a constituency at the

present of about ten thousand men , and quite sufficient to justify me in designating it the lesser Grand Lodge of Ohio Freemasons . But notwithstanding all these conditions , so greatly changing the status of the coloured man , no recognition of him as a Mason was vouchsafed by his white

brother , or allowed by that white brother ' s Grand Lodge , and he was , on the contrary , banned and shunned , and known among the white brethren as a clandestine made Mason , with all that foul epithet implied . Your correspondenthonest Bro . Jacob

, Norton ( if I could give him a higher designati on than what God made him , I would do so ) , was the first to notice this anomaly , and early addressed himself to learning and publishing the facts about the origin of Masonry among the coloured men of

America . After him others took up the subject , and like the snowball , the further it rolled the bigger it got , until at last it made its way into the Grand Lodges . Naturally , that of Massachusetts was looked to as that body in whose midst the first

African Lodge , so called in its charter , granted by the Earl of Effingham as Grand Master of the G . L . of England , in 1784 had existence . But after repeated attempts