THE ORANGE QUESTION.
IT is a singular fact that while the principles of those who supported William of Orange have, in England, nourished what in our day has become the Liberal party, the traditional representatives of the deliverer should, in Ireland, have become the rankest Tories in the United Kingdom ; that while buff and blue have been the colours of the Whigs here, the buff, deepened to a more fiery hue, should have become the symbol of something approaching to Ja- cobitism in the sister country. We may account for the fact by showing that it is at once a cause and consequence of Protestant ascendancy ; that it is a result of the position of the Protestants as conquerors ; but still it remains a political curiosity that the stanchest allies of the representatives of the English Jacobites should be found among the descendants of the stanchest opponents of the Stuarts. Mr. Newdegate and Mr. Bentinck, two time- honoured " cannon balls" of Toryism, find allies among the veter- ans of the Orange Society. It was once thought that Mr. Hume and a Reformed House of Commons had given Orangeism, then supposed to favour a pre- tender to the throne, the coup de grace. But that was a mistake. The Irish Tories who wear the Orange coat, and swear by Boyne water, as the Brahmins by the water of the Ganges, seized the first pretext for resuscitating a secret society, which even a Duke of Cumberland was compelled to dissolve. The great Repeal agitation and the Monster meetings furnished the pretext, and the thing which, since 1829 at all events, has most obstructed Irish progress, rose up in its pristine vigour, sheltered itself within the law, and constituted itself anew. The Orangemen had fought the battle of Protestant ascendancy in 1829, and lost it. Wise and patriotic they would have been had theymanfully acknowledged
themselves beaten, and had they Pi y accepted the new fasts.
But when are factions patriotic? The Tories of Ireland felt that, banded together under some sort of religions sanction, they were a. greater power. There was something, too, of gratified pride in once more flaunting the Orange flayal nine the faces of the Papists, and a truculent satisfaction in sec Aughrim, Londonderry, and Boyne water. Besides were they not more powerful in the state, as a political party, eager to preserve the wrecks of Tory supremacy ? It is true, for all patriotic purposes, the Orangemen of 1845 and 1848 would have been justas useful as temporary special constables, but then they would have missed the satisfaction impart- ed by a seeming resurrection of ancient intolerance, and the oppor- unity of once more organizing the Irish Tory party for purposes more solid than the gratification of fanaticism. So they rose again ; and the fruit of their fatal proceedings is recorded in blood at Dolly's Brae and in Belfast, and finds a place in the criminal registers of many a court in Ireland. Last autumn the Orange Society figured as an indirect cause of the riots at Bel- fast ; and the Government of Lord Carlisle, desirous of giving it a check, declared its resolution not to sanction the appointment of any Orangeman to the commission of the peace. This step provoked the wrath of the Society and put it upon its defence, and it is not too much to say that the English Tories sympathized with their Irish brethren. When a Derby-Disraeli Government to its .great surprise found itself in Downing Street, the Orange- men. indulged in hopes of favour. They have been grievously disappointed, and grievously have they complained of the back- slidings of their friends. The Government sympathized with the Orangemen, but dared not support them. They did, indeed, ap- point Mr. oecil Moore, then a Grand Secretary of the Orange lodge of Tyrone, Crown Prosecutor for the county of Tyrone. But they also offered magisterial honours to Mr. Francis Maguire, the defender of the Pope ; and Mr. Cecil Moore no sooner found himself a Crown Prosecutor than he felt bound to withdraw from the Orange lodge of Tyrone. This shows that responsibility sometimes brings prudence, and that Orange sympathisers in office are more careful than Orange sympathisers in opposition. The Irish Tories don't like it. But they will like still less the doctrine of Mr. Whiteside, that the Government would be unjust if it rejected the fit man, be he Conservative, Radical, or Repealer. Mr. Fitzgerald's motion, on Tuesday, though supported by him in a very objectionable speech, has had the effect of compelling the Government to strike the Orange colours, and by implication to confess that mere Orangeism is a thing to be discouraged. What is the special use of the Orange Society ? It is altogether out of date. It does not tend to promote the social, political, or industrial progress of Ireland. Its very name is an offence to the great majority of the people. If William the Third were to rise he would scowl upon those who take his princely title in vain. The advance of Ireland from enforced idleness, bankruptcy, squalor, incredible suffering has been in proportion to the diminution of the power of that party now represented by the Orange Society. Do the Orangemen desire to restore Ireland to the condition in which it was when Arthur Young saw with amazement a small Protestant aristocracy ruling despotically over millions of slaves ? The bulk of them, we are sure, never dream of such a thing. How inconsistent is human nature ! Here are the men who, were we to impute to them a design like this, would call us calumniators, yet who are putting in operation, as far as they dare, principles that would involve them, their sup- =enemies, and their country in one common ruin. How can ony of national action be produced while one party in the state organizes the principles of dissension into a power, and even dis- turbs the public tranquillity ? True religion cannot be diffused by symbols and names the very sight or sound of which excite feelings of rancorous hostility, and make men desire to shed the blood of their brethren. Sound politics can never be furthered by secret societies based on. obsolete and pernicious dogmas. Commerce and industry and art and science cannot thrive in a land where the public peace is liable to be constantly broken by an outburst of party passions. We are just about to bury our profane state services, our Gunpowder Plots, our Charles the Martyrs, our Stuart Restorations. Let the Orangemen of Ire- land, if they love their country, follow the example of the Peers and Prelates of England, and break up and bury the grinning Orange skeleton, once potent in the flesh, but now only a gal- vanized spectre of the past, powerful for evil alone.
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