The reading of the minutes of the evening, not for confirmation, but for
suggestion, lest anything may have been omitted, should always precede the
closing ceremonies, unless, from the lateness of the hour, it be dispensed
with by the members.



Section II.

_Of Appeals from the Decision of the Chair._


Freemasonry differs from all other institutions, in permitting no appeal
to the lodge from the decision of the presiding officer. The Master is
supreme in his lodge, so far as the lodge is concerned. He is amenable
for his conduct, in the government of the lodge, not to its members, but
to the Grand Lodge alone. In deciding points of order as well as graver
matters, no appeal can be taken from that decision to the lodge. If an
appeal were proposed, it would be his duty, for the preservation of
discipline, to refuse to put the question. It is, in fact, wrong that the
Master should even by courtesy permit such an appeal to be taken; because,
as the Committee of Correspondence of the Grand Lodge of Tennessee have
wisely remarked, by the admission of such appeals by _courtesy_, "is
established ultimately a precedent from which will be claimed _the right
to take_ appeals."[52] If a member is aggrieved with the conduct or the
decisions of the Master, he has his redress by an appeal to the Grand
Lodge, which will of course see that the Master does not rule his lodge
"in an unjust or arbitrary manner." But such a thing as an appeal from the
Master to the lodge is unknown in Masonry.