Four days later, December 19, on motion of Mr. Stevens himself, all the petitions were referred to a committee consisting of “Messrs. Stevens, Cox, Huston (of Fayette) Spackman and Frew, with power to send for persons and papers.”
On the same day this committee organized and prepared a series of eleven questions which were to be put to each person brought before the committee. The questions were intended to establish the fact of membership in Free Masonry or Odd Fellowship and whether or not such witness could repeat the several oaths of the society to which he belonged.
This “Inquisition” held its first meeting December 23, 1835. To this star chamber they obtained the evidence of a man named Shed, who had been imported for the purpose from the State of Ohio. He seems to have resided in several States, and to have arrived at Fort Niagara about the time of Captain Morgan’s abduction, learned all about it, and was acquainted with the scoundrel Giddings, who, if his story was true, as well as Shed’s, ought to have been hanged with him. If not true, they were perjured villains. But the High Court of Inquisition was not after martyrs, it was wire-pulling in other directions.
A large number of prominent Masons, and citizens, were brought before the committee, among them being ex-Governor Wolf, Francis R. Shunk, George M. Dallas, Chief Justice Gibson, Josiah Randall, Samuel H. Perkins, Joseph R. Chandler, and the Reverend William T. Sproul. They invariably declined being qualified, or answering any questions propounded by Mr. Stevens, and for their refusal to so testify, several of the gentlemen were brought to the bar of the House, but nothing more was done to any of them.
Mr. Stevens was obliged to depend for witnesses upon seceding Masons, imported from Massachusetts, New York and Northern Pennsylvania. Their evidence, however, was only a rehash of Morgan and his successor, Bernard, in their so-called “Revelations of the Doings of Freemasonry and Odd Fellowship.”
Mr. Stevens, unfortunately, could not control his temper, and in the case of Rev. Mr. Sproul, when that gentleman, in reading his protest, came to the expression, “Gentlemen, if you are willing to convert yourselves into a modern Juggernaut, then roll on,” “Stop,” thundered the chairman of the “inquisition,” white with wrath and further reading was dispensed with.
Governor Wolf, in his letter to the committee, wrote:
“The Constitution is explicit and declaratory of the personal security of the people, and is the precious repository of the privileges of the freemen of this Commonwealth which never shall have a wound inflicted upon its sacred reservations, through any person, without a solemn asseveration of its principles.
“What article of the Constitution clothes the House with power to institute such an investigation? What article of the venerated instrument forbids the people from associating together in pursuit of their own happiness? If the association is criminal, or in violation of any principle of the Constitution or laws, the mode and manner of suppressing the unlawful combination must be in accordance with the Constitution and laws.
“I have yet to learn that an inquisition at whose shrine the rights and liberties of the citizens are to be invaded, is authorized by the principles of our institutions; or that any power exists by which a citizen can be coerced to give testimony before any tribunal, or for any object other than the investigation of matters at issue, affecting the rights of persons or of things.”