Bodley lodge No. 1 of Quincy was again the first to raise protest. The political and social rancor of the community had as a matter of course to a certain extent infected the lodge. But we must also credit them with a discernment of consequences if Mormon ambitions were given free scope. It may also be said that while location possibly favored a prejudiced view, it also permitted a greater knowledge of affairs in Nauvoo and the other river towns, in which influence of the Saints was supreme. It is therefore not to be wondered at that the records of Bodley lodge (September 29, 1843) should show such action as the following:

Resolved, That we respectfully ask the attention of the members of the grand lodge and delegates to carefully examine into and consider well the propriety of granting a charter to Nauvoo lodge, U. D., and that it is our decided conviction that said dispensation should never have been granted, and from what we have seen and heard from sources to be relied on, that it would be unwise to grant a charter or continue a dispensation longer among that people.

A further resolution instructs the delegates of Bodley lodge to vote against granting a charter at Nauvoo, and to use all their endeavors to procure withdrawal of all dispensations now granted.

The committee on returns and work at this session of 1843 found it necessary to condemn all the Mormon lodges. They found the work of the Eagle lodge, U. D., at Keokuk very irregular and highly censurable, instancing several cases where ballot was had in less period than the full lunar month required. But they add: "In every other respect the work appears to have been correct." In the returns of the Nauvoo lodge they found "the work in some measure correct, but in many instances there appear irregularities, and matters to our committee inexplicable. The lodge had failed to bring their record before the committee, which is a matter of surprise, knowing the severe lesson the said lodge was taught at the last grand communication. The greatest irregularity of which your committee would complain is, that there appears to be a disposition to accumulate and gather members without regard to character, and to push them on through the second and third degrees, before they can be perfectly skilled in the first and second. Your committee . . . feel certain that the ancient landmarks of the order require that the lodge should know that a candidate is well skilled in one degree before he is advanced to another. Your committee will not doubt that there are many worthy and skilled brethren in Nauvoo lodge: brethren--who would under other circumstances be an ornament to the institution of Masonry, but we are reassured that their influence is entirely lost and obscured by the conduct of others less worthy: nay of those who entirely disregard the ties that should bind us together as a sacred band of friends and brothers." The work in Helm lodge, U. D. (Nauvoo}, is characterized as "irregular" and "imprudent," and that of "Nye" lodge, U. D., (Nauvoo), is considered objectionable for like reasons. The returns from Rising Sun lodge No. 12 (Montrose) are "altogether informal" and "the work irregular."

It thus appears that all these bodies were open to censure. Nothing is even hinted at in these reports of the real causes of difficulty. The matters criticised [sic] are not in themselves sufficient to justify the action recommended and taken--they were only used to veil or hide the social, political, and religious difficulties, which were rightfully regarded as dangerous subjects to bring before the grand lodge.