REPORT.

The majority of the Select Committee, to whom was re-
ferred so much of the Governor's Message as related to secret
societies, beg leave to report:

That they have undertaken and performed the duty as-
signed them by the House, with the solicitude natural to the
grave character of the alarm indicated by the Executive upon
the discovery of evils lurking in the social constitution of the
State, of such magnitude as those described in the message.
These evils, the Governor has informed the Legislature, he
has detected, in certain secret political associations, in the
formation and encouragement of which he has found reason
to apprehend the most disastrous dangers to the public
peace, dangers which, in his opinion, threaten civil war in its
worst form—"a war of races and sects," through the agitation
of "the most unconquerable passions and prejudices of the
human heart"—tending to eventually poisoning "of the
very fountain of public security," by which the Constitu-
tion will become " a solemn mockery and the republic a cheat
and a delusion, whose very essence is despotism."

The Governor, though not fully informed of the extent to
which these secret conspiracies have carried their machina-
tions against the safety of the State, has been enabled to
penetrate so far into their wicked purposes as to authorize
him to affirm that they " tend to the subversion of the well
established and most dearly cherished principles of our gov-
ernment, and to the establishment of rules for discriminating
against large classes of citizens, not only unknown to the Fed-
eral Constitution and those of the several States, but plainly
prohibited by the letter and spirit of each and all of them."

It is not very clear from this affirmation whether it is the
rules referred to, or the large classes of citizens that are un-
known to the several constitutions and prohibited by the let-
ter and spirit of each. If the reference be to the former, as
the Committee suppose was the meaning of the author of the