The language of the address could hardly have been warmer. On the other hand, the President’s response was cold, or, if not that, at least puzzling.[895] Asserting first that he had ever esteemed the societies of Freemasons in this country as not only innocent of base designs but actually useful, he seemed to dispel all the comfort which the reading of that assurance was calculated to impart by adding the following: The principle, not to introduce politics in your private assemblies, and the other principle, to be willing subjects to the government, would, if observed, preserve such societies from suspicion. But it seems to be agreed, that the society of Masons have discovered a science of government, or art of ruling society, peculiar to themselves, and unknown to all the other legislators and philosophers of the world; I mean not only the skill to know each other by marks or signs that no other persons can divine, but the wonderful power of enabling and compelling all men, and I suppose all women, at all hours, to keep a secret. If this art can be applied, to set aside the ordinary maxims of society, and introduce politics and disobedience to government, and still keep the secret, it must be obvious that such science and such societies may be perverted to all the ill purposes which have been suspected. The characters which compose the lodges in America are such as forbid every apprehension from them, and they will best know whether any dangers are possible in other countries as well as in this.... I say cordially with you—let not the tongue of slander say, that Masons in America are capable of faction. I am very confident it can not be said by any one with truth of the Masons of Vermont.[896] Was the President ironical or frank? He had intimated that the Masons were _capable_ of corruption: did he, or did he not think they were guiltless of the charge of conspiracy that had recently been lodged against them? One could not be absolutely sure from what he had written. What the Masons of Vermont may have felt when the ambiguous response of the President was before them, we have no means of knowing; but there was one Mason in Massachusetts who read the response of the President to the address of the Vermont Masons, and who was displeased. In the view of William Bentley, the President had done anything but assist the cause of Masonry in the hour of its embarrassment. He has left us the record of his impressions in the following form: