The Orangemen of Ireland have been trying hard to take
a leaf out of the book of the Repealers : but they cannot coin that "fibre d'oro " into serviceable cash, or make any great show of their scrap of sedition. The occasion was the Twelfth of August, anni- versary of the Protestant victory of Aughrim. Loud were the trumpeting announcements of "monster-meetings," popular una- nimity, and overpowering displays. Unluckily, the Lord-Lieute- nant was inconsiderate enough to treat the Orangemen with the same justice as the Repealers underwent; a sad innovation on the times when to be a Tory was to be in the right. Lord Heytesbtuy dismissed Mr. James Watson, a venerable Magistrate, for reorga- nizing Orange lodges • and did so in a letter so severely repri- manding the Justice of Peace for endangering the peace, that the reproof is understood seriously to have daunted the Orange gentry, and they very generally held aloof from the demonstra- tion. The resignation of Mr. Rose Cleland showed how the blow had told home. The displays on Tuesday, therefore, were upon the whole a failure ; and the bitterness of some of the resolutions passed shows the weakness rather than the strength of the Orangemen. The Repealers had made a half-cunning affiance to their now agitated countrymen, inviting them to join in the effort to upset the Union. tl'he Orangemen were not quite foolish enough for that. The weakness of the party arises from the fact that the Irish minority is no longer backed in oppression by the English majority : but let thetn cast off English connexion, and -they de - liver themselves bound hand and foot to the mercy of their Re- peal countrymen, The Repealers may see reflected in the help- less state of the Orangemen the improved state of opinion in Eng- land. The Orangemen may remember, that if England no longer aids their party to oppress, as little will she suffer them to be op- pressed ; whereas Repeal would be tantamount to beginning the extermination of Irish Orangemen.
