The political qualifications are intended to maintain the independence of the Order; because its obligations and privileges are thus confided only to those who, from their position in society, are capable of obeying the one, and of exercising the other without the danger of let or hindrance from superior authority.
Of the moral, physical and political qualifications of a candidate there can be no doubt, as they are distinctly laid down in the ancient charges and constitutions. The intellectual are not so readily decided.
These four-fold qualifications may be briefly summed up in the following axioms.
Morally, the candidate must be a man of irreproachable conduct, a believer in the existence of God, and living "under the tongue of good report."
Physically, he must be a man of at least twenty-one years of age, upright in body, with the senses of a man, not deformed or dismembered, but with hale and entire limbs as a man ought to be.
Intellectually, he must be a man in the full possession of his intellects, not so young that his mind shall not have been formed, nor so old that it shall have fallen into dotage; neither a fool, an idiot, nor a madman; and with so much education as to enable him to avail himself of the teachings of Masonry, and to cultivate at his leisure a knowledge of the principles and doctrines of our royal art.
Politically, he must be in the unrestrained enjoyment of his civil and personal liberty, and this, too, by the birthright of inheritance, and not by its subsequent acquisition, in consequence of his release from hereditary bondage.
The lodge which strictly demands these qualifications of its candidates may have fewer members than one less strict, but it will undoubtedly have better ones.
But the importance of the subject demands for each class of the qualifications a separate section, and a more extended consideration.