Seems like an appropriate quote from Albert Pike, who was a Freemason, and writing about it:
“Fictions are necessary for the people, and the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its brilliance. In fact, what can there be in common between the vile multitude and sublime wisdom? The Truth must be kept secret, and the masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason.”
Of course being a Christian, I like the quote about “and the Truth shall set you free” better. And a Truth that is available for all.
Albert Pike was a real piece of work
Seems like an appropriate quote from Albert Pike
State or Province? Bond or Free?“The vital principe of EQUALITY, which cements the Union of the States”
MadisonAddressed Particularly to the People of Arkansas
By Albert Pike
1861
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Mr. Seward, who is ambitious to wear the honors of philosophic statesmanship, and thinks to attain them by antitheses and paradoxes, pronounced, a year since, that there was an “irrepressible conflict” begun between the North and the South. It was true; but it was not true in the sense in which he applied it. The real controversy between them is as old as the Constitution itself. For it is a radical difference as to the very nature of the Government; and it arrayed against each other the first parties formed in the Republic. The Southern States hold, as Jefferson and Madison and all the Anti-Federal party held, that the General Government is the result of a compact between the States; a compact made by the States, amendable by the States only, and dissolvable by the States whenever it fails to answer the purposes for which they created it. The earliest symbol of the Union — a chain, composed of thirteen circular links, each perfect in symmetry and complete in its separate identity—well expressed the true nature of that union, and the Southern States’-rights doctrine. The Northern States, on the contrary, hold that there is no such compact; that the whole people of all the States, as an aggregate and unit, made the Constitution; and that there is no right of secession retained by a State; from which, by our American common law, it results as an inevitable corollary, that whenever the majority of voters of the whole Union choose to exercise the power, notwithstanding the mode provided by the Constitution or its amendment, they may call a Convention, not of the States, nor in each State, but of the whole People of all; and, the majority being there represented, may set aside the present Constitution of the United States, and make a new one, making, if they please, of the whole Union a single State, and of the States mere Counties.
For fresh in our recollection that the People of New York, not many years since, held a Convention, in utter contempt of their Constitution, and of the mode which it provided for its amendment, and made a new Constitution, which the highest Court of that State held valid, and it governs that State now.
And it will also be recollected that it was earnestly argued, by Southern men, only two years ago, that the People of Kansas would have a right to change their Constitution, in defiance of the provision contained in it, prohibiting any change for a certain length of time.
If seven men agree to go into business together, and make a contract to that effect, and three of them hold that it is an ordinary partnership they have established, while the other four hold that it is a corporation—if such were the different understandings of the parties in framing the contract, perhaps on the principle that there is no contract unless the wills of the contracting parties agree, there would be no contract between them at all. It clearly
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could not be a mere partnership for part, and a corporation for part, of them.
If the difference were even only one of interpretation, it would continually reappear in the various transactions of the parties; and it is very evident that, being so radical and fundamental a disagreement, it would in a little time render continuance of the connection impossible.
That is, precisely the case with the Union which is now being dissolved. There is a difference as wide and substantial between this Government, as its nature is understood by the fifteen Slaveholding States, and the same Government, as its nature is understood by the nineteen Non- Slaveholding States, as there is between Constitutional Monarchy in England and Imperial Absolutism in France.
We should not consent to remain a day in such a Government as Mr. Webster confirmed the North in holding this to be. We do not believe that a centralized and consolidated government, built on the theory that the people of all these States were massed into one in order to make it, can have perpetuity or even continuance. To us the value and only recommendation of the Government are that it is the result of a compact between the States, that no individual action, but only State action, is constitutionally felt in the General Government, and that the States remain as they were when they achieved their independence, “FREE, SOVEREIGN, EQUAL, AND INDEPENDENT STATES.”
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