THE EQUINOX
and in this case, the Chancellery fortunately reposing in the
trained legal hands of Very Illustrious Brother Higham, it is
certain that no inadvertence has been committed.
I pass over therefore the breach of Article II and Article
XI, which render this Convocation powerless to proceed to the
business for which it purports to have been summoned, and I
ask at whose instigation these illegalities have been committed?
There is not one of you who is ignorant of the answer.
The age and infirmity of our lamented Grand Hierophant
allowed him to yield to improper persuasion, to be deceived
by an intrigue no wilier than those he had so often defeated
in his prime, and to relax the strict rules of our Constitution.
Even to this exalted Sanctuary there has been admitted,
in flagrant violation of Article VI of our Constitution, a man
who is not and never was a member of a lodge in good
standing working under a Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted
Masons. The Sanctuary must be purged.
But it is not for this that I have left my very pleasant
encampment in the Valley of Paris. Were the man of whom
I speak a man free and of good report, I should perhaps have
held my peace. I am not here to stickle even for the funda-
mentals of our Rite. But he is not even a free man, but the
hired tool of a woman. Do you wonder if I protest that a
woman—and women are excluded even from symbolic
Masonry—should seek the usurpation of our Sovereignty?
And yet this alone would not have induced me to exchange
the amenities of my encampment in the Valley of Paris for the
sterner and gloomier grandeurs of the Valley of Manchester.
Who is the woman of whom I speak? What are her
antecedents? Is it a Blavatsky or a Joan of Arc that seeks to
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