Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

freemasons, that were secretive by nature. 99 By name, the government outlawed
the London Corresponding Society, the United Englishmen, United Scotsmen,
United Irishmen, and the United Britons. Pitt justified the legislation by
emphasizing the continual need to oppose seditious societies:
165
We must proceed still farther, now that we are engaged in a most
important struggle with the restless and fatal spirit of Jacobinism,
assuming new shapes, and concealing its malignant and destructive
designs under new forms and new practices. In order to oppose its
effect, we must also from time to time adopt new modes, and assume
new shapes…These marks are wicked and illegal engagements of mutual
fidelity and secrecy by which the members are bound; the secrecy of
electing the members; the secret government and conduct of the affairs
of the society; secret appointments unknown to the bulk of the members;
presidents and committees, which, veiling themselves from the general
mass and knowledge of the members, plot and conduct the treason – I
propose that all societies which administer such oaths shall be declared
unlawful confederacies. 100
By July 1799 the government had passed the Secret Societies Act, or ‘An
act for the more effectual suppression of societies established for seditious and
treasonable purposes; and for the better preventing treasonable and seditious
practices,’ which effectively regulated and policed freemasonry in Scotland. In
no uncertain terms, the Act emphatically declared that
a traitorous conspiracy had long been carried on with the persons from
time to time exercising the power of government in France to overturn
the laws, constitution and government and that in pursuance of such
design, diverse societies had been instituted…All and every of the said
societies [that require] an unlawful oath or engagement…shall be
deemed guilty of an unlawful combination and confederacy. 101
99 See Gould’s History of Freemasonry Vol. 3, 394-395; Fred L. Pick and G. Norman Knight,
The Freemason’s Pocket Reference Book (London, 1983), 344-345; Seggie, Journeymen
Masons, 253-257.
100 Quoted in Prescott, “Unlawful,” 3.
101 Lambert, House of Commons Sessional Papers Vol. 120, 365-384.