The Universal Language of Freemasonry - ArchiMeD - Johannes ...

Chapter 10 - Conclusion 847
uniformity with the help of the "Conservators of Symbolic Masonry" under his
guidance. As "Chief Conservator", he sent confidential circulars to Masons all
over America in 1860, in order to give them an outline of his plans. As is shown
in Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia, he was heavily opposed:
Fulminations against the Conservators soon broke out. In 1862, they
were attacked in the communications of the Grand Lodges of Illinois,
Kentucky, and Maine; in 1863 in Missouri, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas,
Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, and Wisconsin;
in 1864 in Michigan, New Jersey, Iowa, and Kentucky; and in 1865 in
New York. 2080
Although not all of these Grand Lodges took action, some of them severely
denounced Morris, and the Grand Lodge of Missouri even required its members
to take an oath renouncing the "Conservators." Reasons for the objections were
that the "Conservators" had violated the landmarks as well as the obligation not
to publish Masonic secrets, that their ritual was not the true Webb-Preston work,
that their scheme was clandestine, mercenary and placed the control of the ritual
in the hands of a single man, that the Grand Lodge had not approved this new
work, and that the cipher was shameful. Morris, seeing his system having failed
which brought him bad repute for several years, dissolved the "Conservators" in
1865, and the excitement ebbed away.
In order to demonstrate the general sentiments among Freemasons during the
so-called "ritual question" in the 1860s, it is important not to hear only the grand
orators', lecturers' or encyclopedists' point of view, but also the one of the
common members of the Craft. This can be done for example by analyzing the
attacks found in letters to the editors of contemporary monthlies. In the following
we are going to cite a heavy complaint by a reader who undersigned with
MASTER in a letter to Cornelius Moore, the editor of the Masonic Review,
appearing in N° 27 from the year 1862 under the headline "Ritualism in Indiana,"
in which the reader condemns in a chauvinistic way all "foreign interventions" in
his State's "domestic affairs":
You are fully aware of the agitation of this question, superinduced by
Bro. Rob. Morris, of Kentucky, with his so-called Webb Work, par
excellence, and his system of secret agencies, conservators, keys, etc.
This unsolicited interference in our domestic affairs by a brother
from another jurisdiction, has created a good deal of uneasiness, and a
considerable acrimony of feeling - for we in Indiana have a
reasonable share of State pride, and the vanity to believe that we
are capable of taking care of the Royal Art within our jurisdiction
without any 'foreign intervention.' 2081
2080 CME, p. 568.
2081 Moore, Masonic Review, N° 27, p. 109.