The safety of the minority, the preservation of harmony, and the dispatch
of business, all require that there should be, in every well-regulated
society, some rules and forms for the government of their proceedings,
and, as has been justly observed by an able writer on parliamentary law,
"whether these forms be in all cases the most rational or not, is really
not of so great importance; for it is much more material that there should
be a rule to go by, than what that rule is."[50] By common consent, the
rules established for the government of Parliament in England, and of
Congress in the United States, and which are known collectively under the
name of "Parliamentary Law," have been adopted for the regulation of all
deliberative bodies, whether of a public or private nature. But lodges of
Freemasons differ so much in their organization and character from other
societies, that this law will, in very few cases, be found applicable;
and, indeed, in many positively inapplicable to them. The rules,
therefore, for the government of masonic lodges are in general to be
deduced from the usages of the Order, from traditional or written
authority, and where both of them are silent, from analogy to the
character of the institution. To each of these sources, therefore, I shall
apply, in the course of the present chapter, and in some few instances,
where the parliamentary law coincides with our own, reference will be made
to the authority of the best writers on that science.



Section I.

_Of the Order of Business._