“In the present time, Freemasons cannot but feel that a terrible responsibility is committed to their charge. The ancient interests and ambitions of Churches and States are coming into perpetual and jarring collision with the new. The ebb-tides of bigotry and despotism are clashing with the advancing currents of enthusiasm and dissolute passion. The spray of the whirling eddies already whitens the deep, and the roar of the conflicting breakers is heard far away upon the wind. God saith, ‘I will overturn, overturn, overturn, until He shall come whose right the kingdom is’; and the sea and the waves are roaring upon every shore, and men’s hearts fail them for fear, and for looking on those things which are coming on the earth. To true masons is entrusted the hazardous charge of piloting the vessel athwart the boiling whirlpools. They will save, if they can, earth’s latest age from indecent strife and confusion, and struggle hard against the unfilial and disloyal apostates, that would bring down her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.”[30] Here I would willingly close my Introduction; but as it may seem strange that a work which bears upon its title-page the character of “Prize Essay” should not have been published by the Society that have awarded it the prize, I am obliged to open up a statement of facts which I had rather have concealed; yet, in doing so, I shall take care, now that all vexation has passed over, that no symptoms of asperity shall escape my pen; all the colouring of language I shall equally avoid; nay, even inferences, however obvious, I shall not press into observation, but confine myself strictly to a matter-of-fact detail as to the conduct of the party in the case in question. In December 1830, the Royal Irish Academy, after many fruitless efforts to obtain information on the subject of the Round Towers, proposed a premium of a gold medal and fifty pounds to the author of an approved Essay, in which all particulars respecting them were expected to be explained. This intimation I never saw. The stipulated time for the composition of treatises--namely, a full twelvemonth--expired, and the several candidates sent in their works. After a perusal of two or three months, the Council agreed upon giving the premium to one of them; but his work being deficient in some of the conditions required,[31] it was furthermore resolved that he should be allowed some additional interval for the supplying of these defects, and this determination they put into practice by the following advertisement:-- “ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY HOUSE, DUBLIN, “_21st February 1832_. “It having appeared to the Royal Irish Academy that none of the Essays given in on the subject of the ‘Round Towers,’ as advertised in December 1830, have satisfied the conditions of the question, they have come to the following resolutions:-- “1st. That the question be advertised again as follows:--