In every lodge there are two of these officers--a Senior and a Junior
Deacon. They are not elected, but appointed; the former by the Master, and
the latter by the Senior Warden.

The duties of these officers are many and important; but they are so well
defined in the ritual as to require no further consideration in this
place.

The only question that here invites our examination is, whether the
Deacons, as appointed officers, are removable at the pleasure of the
officers who appointed them; or, whether they retain their offices, like
the Master and Wardens, until the expiration of the year. Masonic
authorities are silent on this subject; but, basing my judgment upon
analogy, I am inclined to think that they are not removable: all the
officers of a lodge are chosen to serve for one year, or, from one
festival of St. John the Evangelist to the succeeding one. This has been
the invariable usage in all lodges, and neither in the monitorial
ceremonies of installation, nor in any rules or regulations which I have
seen, is any exception to this usage made in respect to Deacons. The
written as well as the oral law of Masonry being silent on this subject,
we are bound to give them the benefit of this silence, and place them in
the same favorable position as that occupied by the superior officers,
who, we know, by express law are entitled to occupy their stations for one
year. Moreover, the power of removal is too important to be exercised
except under the sanction of an expressed law, and is contrary to the
whole spirit of Masonry, which, while it invests a presiding officer with
the largest extent of prerogative, is equally careful of the rights of the
youngest member of the fraternity.

From these reasons I am compelled to believe that the Deacons, although