ENGLAND AND BRO. STOUT'S PRESENT MASONIC POSITION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 9117, 16 May 1891, Page 5 (Supplement)

ENGLAND AND BRO. STOUT'S PRESENT MASONIC POSITION.

(Tbe New Zealand Craftsman.)

The action o£ Bro. Sir Kobert Stout,' Deputy District Grand Master of Otago and Southland, and Past Assistant Grand Director of Ceremonies, in inaugurating in Wellington, some 12 months ago, a lodge holding under the Grand Orient of Prance, was of course widely canvassed amongst Freemasons, and much wonderment was expressed as to the course that would be taken by the United Grand Lodge of England. Time passed, however, and it seemed as though nothing were about to be done in the matter, when, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, came the telegraphic announcement that Sir Eobert Stout had been deprived, .by the Prince of Wales, of his Masonic rank. In commenting upon this in our March issue we suggested the deprivation applied to his Grand rank only, i.e., to the position of Past Assistant Grand Director of Ceremonies, conferred upon him in the jubilee year; and we expressed our belief that his removal from the Deputy District Grand Mastership would need to be the act of the D.G.M. of Otago and Southland, Bro. T. S. Graham. And so it has proved. We have now the full report of the proceedings of the March Quarterly Communication of Grand Lodge, as well as Bro. Sir Kobert Stout's letter in reply to the Grand Secretary's requiring an explanation of his conduct. After reading this letter we are by no means surprised that our London contemporary, the Freemason, should suggest that it would be rendered "impossible for Bro. Sir Robert Stout to insult our Grand Lodge on any future occasion "; for we dare to say that that communication will have sppeared to our exalted home brethren as pettifogging, flippant, and even as rude. Pettifogging in the abortive attempt he makes to challenge the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge; flippant, in the indecorous allusions to " Oddfellows, Foresters, and Buffaloes "; and rude when towards the end, he coolly desires 3rand Lodge to mind its own business. Sir Eobert Stout's challenge of jurisdiction — which, however he afterwards somewhat ostentatiously waives — is at once swept aside by Bro. Philbrick, Grat.d Kegistrar, who pertinently asks how a District Grand Lodge could possibly interfere between Grand Lodge and a Grand Lodge officer. In the leader in our March issue we said:—"lt will, we opine, be found that the fact that the Grand Orient of France do not require belief in a Supreme Being as a qualification for membership—though foremost in and strongly influencing, it may be, the minds of every memberof Grand Lodge—was not the actual reason alleged for Bro. Sir Eobert's deprivation. We believe it will be found that such reason has been the invasion of territory by the "French Orient.. The unpardonable offence of which Bro. Sir Eobert has been found guilty is the procuring of a warrant from a foreign Masonic body, which enabled him to establish on British soil a subordinate lodge holding allegiance to the Grand Orient oE France." It will be noted that this is exactly the attitude, both of the M.W. the Grand Master and the other distinguished brethren who spoke on the question. Regarded as a piece of reasoning, Bro. Sir Robert Stout's letter is— weO., peculiar ; but perhaps the strangest passage in it is this: " The very fact that the Grand Orient of France is not recognised makes attending it no Masonic offence. If I had joined in getting up a rival and recognised body, there might be something said to me, but not for what I have done." How the eminent legists in Grand Lodge must have stared when this . paragiaph was read! Had Sir Robert joined in getting up a " rival and recognised body;" say, for instance, had he started a lodge in Dunedin holding under the Grand Lodge of California, he admits that he would have committed a Masonic offence. But let us follow this out. Immediately on such an ast as we have imagined above being brought to the knowledge of the United Grand Lodge of England, a protest would have issued, and failing prompt reparation of the injury by the. suppression of such lodge, Masonic communion of England with the Grand Lodge of California would cease. At once the Grand Lodge of California would take the position of an unrecognised body; and then membership of an English Mason in a Dunedin lodge holding uDder such a body would — under the above "reasoning"—become no Masonic offence! Surely the reductio ad absurdum is evident and inevitable I Oh 1 Sir Robert I Sir Robert I But—more seriously—it is manifestly no palliation of Sir Robert's offence that the Grand Orient of France is not in communion with the Grand Lodge of England; but decidedly an aggravation of it, for had it been so in communion, action to resent the intrusion would have been easy; whereas now it is almost impossible. Hence the intrusion is far more mischievous, and Sir Robert's action the more reprehensible. We now await the course that the D.G.M. and the Board of General Purpose! of Ofcago and Southland—to whom Grand Lodge has formally remitted the conduct of the rest of this affair—will adopt. It was noticeable that immediately upon the arrival of the British mail bringing the full report of the quarterly communication of Grand Lodge in March the D.G.M. let it be known that he had accepted, "with regret," the resignation of his deputy. As to this and other phases of the question, the B.W. Bro. Thomas Sherlock Gralmm may have himself to Kckon with Grand Lodge, and possibly there yet remains for him a mauvais quart d'heure. Nous verrons.

—The Boorat^nnd Tungus population of Irkutsk (Baßt Siberia, on the borders of China) still keep up a kind of slavery. They buy and sell mostly little girls, who are then kept as slaves by the purchasers. —A French paper points out that the passion for gambling iii co great in England that even in wedding notices it is necorary to ttate that there are "nooarda," in order to put a check upon the national tendency to gamble an all occasions.