Section V.

Of the Petition of Candidates for Admission, and the Action thereon.

The application of a candidate to a lodge, for initiation, is called a “petition.”  This petition should always be in writing, and generally contains a statement of the petitioner’s age, occupation, and place of residence, and a declaration of the motives which have prompted the application, which ought to be “a favorable opinion conceived of the institution and a desire of knowledge."[67] This petition must be recommended by at least two members of the lodge.

The petition must be read at a stated or regular communication of the lodge, and referred to a committee of three members for an investigation of the qualifications and character of the candidate.  The committee having made the necessary inquiries, will report the result at the next regular communication and not sooner.

The authority for this deliberate mode of proceeding is to be found in the fifth of the 39 General Regulations, which is in these words: 

“No man can be made or admitted a member of a particular lodge, without previous notice one month before given to the said lodge, in order to make due inquiry into the reputation and capacity of the candidate; unless by dispensation aforesaid.”

The last clause in this article provides for the only way in which this probation of a month can be avoided, and that is when the Grand Master, for reasons satisfactory to himself, being such as will constitute what is called (sometimes improperly) a case of emergency, shall issue a dispensation permitting the lodge to proceed forthwith to the election.

But where this dispensation has not been issued, the committee should proceed diligently and faithfully to the discharge of their responsible duty.  They must inquire into the moral, physical, intellectual and political qualifications of the candidate, and make their report in accordance with the result of their investigations.

The report cannot be made at a special communication, but must always be presented at a regular one.  The necessity of such a rule is obvious.  As the Master can at any time within his discretion convene a special meeting of his lodge, it is evident that a presiding officer, if actuated by an improper desire to intrude an unworthy and unpopular applicant upon the craft, might easily avail himself for that purpose of an occasion when the lodge being called for some other purpose, the attendance of the members was small, and causing a ballot to be taken, succeed in electing a candidate, who would, at a regular meeting, have been blackballed by some of those who were absent from the special communication.

This regulation is promulgated by the Grand Lodge of England, in the following words:  “No person shall be made a Mason without a regular proposition at one lodge and a ballot at the next regular stated lodge;” it appears to have been almost universally adopted in similar language by the Grand Lodges of this country; and, if the exact words of the law are wanting in any of the Constitutions, the general usage of the craft has furnished an equivalent authority for the regulation.