ll be productive of no injury to the Order.

If this petition be granted, the Grand Secretary prepares a document
called a _dispensation_, which authorizes the officers named in the
petition to open and hold a lodge, and to "enter, pass, and raise
Freemasons." The duration of this dispensasation is generally expressed on
its face to be, "until it shall be revoked by the Grand Master or the
Grand Lodge, or until a warrant of constitution is granted by the Grand
Lodge." Preston says, that the Brethren named in it are authorized "to
assemble as Masons for forty days, and until such time as a warrant of
constitution can be obtained by command of the Grand Lodge, or that
authority be recalled." But generally, usage continues the dispensation
only until the next meeting of the Grand Lodge, when it is either revoked,
or a warrant of constitution granted.

If the dispensation be revoked by either the Grand Master or the Grand
Lodge (for either has the power to do so), the lodge of course at once
ceases to exist. Whatever funds or property it has accumulated revert, as
in the case of all extinct lodges, to the Grand Lodge, which may be called
the natural heir of its subordinates; but all the work done in the lodge,
under the dispensation, is regular and legal, and all the Masons made by
it are, in every sense of the term, "true and lawful Brethren."

Let it be supposed, however, that the dispensation is confirmed or
approved by the Grand Lodge, and we thus arrive at another step in the
history of the new lodge. At the next sitting of the Grand Lodge, after
the dispensation has been issued by the Grand Master, he states that fact
to the Grand Lodge, when, either at his request, or on motion of some
Brother, the vote is taken on the question of constituting the new lodge,
and, if a majority are in favor of it, the Grand Secretary is ordered to
grant a warrant of constitution.

This instrument differs from a dispensation in many important particulars.
It is signed by all the Grand Officers, and emanates from the Grand Lodge,
while the dispensation emanates from the office of the Grand Master, and
is signed by him alone. The authority of the dispensation is temporary,
that of the warrant permanent; the one can be revoked at pleasure by the
Grand Master, who granted it; the other only for cause shown, and by the
Grand Lodge; the one bestows only a name, the other both a name and a
number; the one confers only the power of holding a