until the next stated meeting, and requests the Brother who deposited the black ball to call upon him and state his reasons.  At the next stated meeting the Master announces these reasons to the lodge, if any have been made known to him, concealing, of course, the name of the objecting Brother.  At this time the validity or truth of the objections may be discussed, and the friends of the applicant will have an opportunity of offering any defense or explanation.  The ballot is then taken a third time, and the result, whatever it may be, is final.  As I have already observed, in most of the lodges of this country, a reappearance of the one black ball will amount to a rejection.  In those lodges which do not require unanimity, it will, of course, be necessary that the requisite number of black balls must be deposited on this third ballot to insure a rejection.  But if, on inspection, the box is found to be “clear,” or without a black ball, the candidate is, of course, declared to be elected.  In any case, the result of the third ballot is final, nor can it be set aside or reversed by the action of the Grand Master or Grand Lodge; because, by the sixth General Regulation, already so frequently cited, the members of every particular lodge are the best judges of the qualifications of their candidates; and, to use the language of the Regulation, “if a fractious member should be imposed on them, it might spoil their harmony, or hinder their freedom, or even break and disperse the lodge.”

Section VII.

Of the Reconsideration of the Ballot.

There are, unfortunately, some men in our Order, governed, not by essentially bad motives, but by frail judgments and by total ignorance of the true object and design of Freemasonry, who never, under any circumstances, have recourse to the black ball, that great bulwark of Masonry, and are always more or less incensed when any more judicious Brother exercises his privilege of excluding those whom he thinks unworthy of participation in our mysteries.

I have said, that these men are not governed by motives essentially bad.  This is the fact.  They honestly desire the prosperity of the institution, and they would not willfully do one act which would impede that prosperity.  But their judgments are weak, and their zeal is without knowledge.  They do not at all understand in what the true prosperity of the Order consists, but really and conscientiously believing that its actual strength will be promoted by the increase of the number of its disciples; they look rather to the quantity than to the quality of the applicants who knock at the doors of our lodges.

Now a great difference in respect to the mode in which the ballot is conducted, will be found in those lodges which are free from the presence of such injudicious brethren, and others into which they have gained admittance.