Is it not clearly to be seen that this Order meditated the establishment of a government more despotic in its character than history furnishes any example of? A government with three degrees or departments, each oath-bound and a profound secret to the other, moving in their appointed spheres, and the civil departments of which were secondary, in point of power, to the military departments! Let no man, of whatever political persuasion he may be, flatter himself for a moment that such a government could be Republican in its nature. Having now traced, with perhaps a tedious hand, the rise and fall of two political Orders, ranking among the most powerful instruments of crime and public wrong of their day, the writer bids their unmourned remains farewell, to pass to the consideration in the succeeding chapter, of the desperate career and final explosion of the Order of the Sons of Liberty--a solemn warning to the American people forever. To save the Goudys, Caulfields, Adams, Edwards, Duncans, Wickershams, Cuttings, and Kimberlys, the Morrises, Walshes, Jacksons, Pattens, Gearys, and Doolittles were put forward because they were eager for the fray, and possessed the temerity to brave the danger of Union bullets. We have now seen how the Temple or First Degree was instituted in counties; how the various elements of treason were collected together and detailed for their special service of educating the ignorant, manufacturing materials and munitions of war, and devising plots to burn, plunder, and pillage unsuspecting cities; how each member was singled out according to his fitness for certain duties, which he performed without their character coming even to his fellow members of the same degree; and how the brained leaders of these institutions retired to the back ground to elude the vigilance of the ministers of the law, and "adjust the wires" that were to check to-day, and to-morrow precipitate the conspiracy. The Grand Council, or Second Degree, was established in every State where the Temple Degree had obtained any strength and character as to numbers. This Degree resembled the State in its governmental organization, and bore the same relation to the Supreme Council or Third Degree that the State governments of the Federal Union bear to the government at Washington. The Order having a military department, these Grand Councils, in council assembled, adopted the militia and other statute laws of the particular State, with such revisions, exceptions and additional laws as were deemed essential to the successful operation of the Order. Regular semi-annual meetings of the Grand Councils were held, convening respectively on the 22d of August and the 22d of February--the latter, in sacrilege be it said, being religiously observed as the birthday of Washington.