PART I.

THE ORIGIN AND BASIS OF MASONIC LAW.

CHAPTER I.

THE LANDMARKS.

JURISPRUDENCE, it is scarcely necessary to state, is the science or philosophy of law. Law deals with the person and property of subjects, and subjects everywhere are bound to render faithful and submissive obedience to law. It is necessary, therefore, that wherever laws exist, those who are bound to obey them should know and understand them. Jurisprudence has for its subject the whole duties and responsibilities legally resting upon communities or corporations of men; and takes cognisance not only of actual laws, but of the principles on which they are based.

With Jurisprudence in the abstract we have at present nothing to do. As to Jurisprudence in application to Freemasonry, a very few words of explanation will suffice. As it is desirable and necessary that every subject of a nation should be acquainted with the Constitution and Laws of that nation, so it is desirable and necessary that every Freemason should be acquainted with the Constitution and Laws of Freemasonry; and as it is impossible that subjects can, without thought or study, render a rational or satisfactory obedience to the laws, written or unwritten, of the nation in which they have had their birth or naturalisation, so it is impossible that Freemasons can, without thought and study, render a rational and satisfactory obedience to the laws, written or unwritten, of the Lodge

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into which they have been introduced, or over which they may be called to preside.

In the Masonic body, as in nations, communities, and societies generally, the members are governed by, and subject to, Constitutions and Laws. These Constitutions and Laws they need to know, and are bound to observe. It is their duty to make themselves acquainted with them. They cannot be good Freemasons and be ignorant of them; they cannot be useful Freemasons and disregard them.

The laws, customs, and usages of Freemasonry may be classified, like the laws, customs, and usages of Great Britain and other kingdoms, under two great divisions, the "leges scripte" and the "leges non-scriptæ," or the "written" and the "unwritten." Or a threefold division of them may be made under the heads of-LANDMARKS; GENERAL REGULATIONS; and LOCAL REGULATIONS. Blackstone defines "the unwritten laws of England" as those whose "original institution and authority are not set down in writing, as Acts of Parliament are, but receive their binding power and the force of laws by long and immemorial usage, and by their universal reception throughout the kingdom;" and he defines "the written laws" to be the "statutes, acts, or edicts made by, or with the advice and consent of, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament assembled." These definitions are generally applicable-mutatis mutandis—to the written and unwritten laws of Freemasonry. The Landmarks are the unwritten laws or customs of the Order; and the Constitutions and Regulations made by the supreme authority of the body form its written law, which is either general or local, according as the authority which enacted them was in its character general or local.

The Landmarks of Freemasonry are those ancient, and therefore universal, customs of the Order which either have gradually grown into operation as rules of action, or if at any time enacted by competent authority, were enacted at a period so remote, that no account of their origin is to be found in the records of history; both the enactors and

the time of the enactments having passed into oblivion. Blackstone says, that "the goodness of a custom depends upon its having been used time out of mind, or, in the solemnity of our legal phrase, time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. This it is that gives it its weight and authority." It is this exactly that constitutes. a Landmark in Freemasonry. Antiquity-an antiquity reaching beyond all history, and such that it must be deemed to have been in force from the earliest periods to which history relates is essential to a Landmark. "Were it possible," says Bro. Dr Mackay, "for all the Masonic authorities at the present day to unite in a universal congress, and, with the most perfect unanimity, to adopt any new regulation, although such regulation would, so long as it remained unrepealed, be obligatory on the whole craft, it would not be a Landmark. It would have the character of universality, it is true, but it would be wanting in that of antiquity."

Another peculiarity of the Landmarks of Freemasonry is, that they are unrepealable. As no power exists to enact a Landmark, so no power exists to abolish one. What the Landmarks were centuries ago, they still are, and must continue to remain till Freemasonry itself ceases to exist. The stability, security, and universality of Freemasonry are guaranteed by them. They stand in the way of destructive innovations, and, as they are few in number, and in their own nature such as to commend themselves to universal approval, they do not raise up a barrier in the path of salutary reform.

LANDMARKS.

On a careful examination and computation of the Landmarks of Freemasonry, they are found to amount to only twenty-five in number. They are as follows:

1. The Modes of Recognition.

2. The Division of Symbolic Masonry into Three Degrees.

3. The Legend of the Third Degree.

4. The Government of the Fraternity by a Grand Master, elected from the body of the Craft.