University, has undoubtedly occasioned a great deal of thought in every
college in the country upon secret societies. Professor Wilder, of Cornell,
has written a very careful and serious letter, in which he strongly opposes
them, plainly stating their great disadvantages, and citing the order
of Jesuits as the most powerful and thoroughly organized of all secret
associations, and therefore the one in which their character and tendency
may best be observed. The debate recalls the history of the Antimasonic
excitement in this country, which is, however, seldom mentioned in recent
years, so that the facts may not be familiar to the reader.

In the year 1826 William Morgan, living in Batavia, in the western part of
New York, near Buffalo, was supposed to intend the publication of a book
which would reveal the secrets of Masonry. The Masons in the vicinity were
angry, and resolved to prevent the publication, and made several forcible
but ineffective attempts for that purpose. On the 11th of September, 1826,
a party of persons from Canandaigua came to Batavia and procured the arrest
of Morgan upon a criminal charge, and he was carried to Canandaigua for
examination. He was acquitted, but was immediately arrested upon a civil
process, upon which an execution was issued, and he was imprisoned in the
jail at Canandaigua. The next evening he was discharged at the instance of
those who had caused his arrest, and was taken from the jail after nine
o'clock in the evening. Those who had obtained the discharge instantly
seized him, gagged and bound him, and throwing him into a carriage, hurried
off to Rochester. By relays of horses and by different hands he was borne
along, until he was lodged in the magazine of Fort Niagara, at the mouth of
the Niagara River.

The circumstances of his arrest, and those that had preceded it,
had aroused and inflamed the minds of the people in Batavia and the
neighborhood. A committee was appointed at a public meeting to ascertain