Now, if A, who is a Freemason, shall have committed an offense, of which B and C alone were cognizant as witnesses, shall it be said that A must be acquitted for want of proof, because B and C are not members of the Order?  We apprehend that in this instance the ends of justice would be defeated, rather than subserved.  If the veracity and honesty of B and C are unimpeached, their testimony as to the fact cannot lawfully be rejected on any ground, except that they may be interested in the result of the trial, and might be benefited by the conviction or the acquittal of the defendant.  But this is an objection that would hold against the evidence of a Mason, as well as a profane.

Any other rule would be often attended with injurious consequences to our institution.  We may readily suppose a case by way of illustration.  A, who is a member of a lodge, is accused of habitual intemperance, a vice eminently unmasonic in its character, and one which will always reflect a great portion of the degradation of the offender upon the society which shall sustain and defend him in its perpetration.  But it may happen—­and this is a very conceivable case—­that in consequence of the remoteness of his dwelling, or from some other supposable cause, his Brethren have no opportunity of seeing him, except at distant intervals.  There is, therefore, no Mason, to testify to the truth of the charge, while his neighbors and associates, who are daily and hourly in his company, are all aware of his habit of intoxication.

If, then, a dozen or more men, all of reputation and veracity, should come, or be brought before the lodge, ready and willing to testify to this fact, by what process of reason or justice, or under what maxim of masonic jurisprudence, could their testimony be rejected, simply because they were not Masons?  And if rejected—­if the accused with this weight of evidence against him, with this infamy clearly and satisfactorily proved by these reputable witnesses, were to be acquitted, and sent forth purged of the charge, upon a mere technical ground, and thus triumphantly be sustained in the continuation of his vice, and that in the face of the very community which was cognizant of his degradation of life and manners, who could estimate the disastrous consequences to the lodge and the Order which should thus support and uphold him in his guilty course?  The world would not, and could not appreciate the causes that led to the rejection of such clear and unimpeachable testimony, and it would visit with its just reprobation the institution which could thus extend its fraternal affections to the support of undoubted guilt.