130 Ireland, the Orangemen, and the Papists. |^Aug. 



lament the whole business. To the Orange Lodges we affix no moral 

 blame. They had a right to make their processions, and they had a 

 right to defend themselves when attacked. Times, bad as they are, 

 have not yet become so bad, that a Protestant must stoop his head for 

 fear a Papist should be offended by his looking him in the face. The 

 Avill of the popish association has not yet been proclaimed the law for 

 Ireland ; nor was it altogether unnatural that when Protestants saw the 

 " great agitator" allowed to march through three-fourths of Ireland, with 

 his green ribbons, his order of liberator round his neck, and his medals 

 of " Liberation" in his hands, to be distributed to every rabble leader 

 on his road, a northern Protestant should think that orange was at least 

 as lawful a colour as green, and implied at least as much loyalty ; 

 nor that when Government looked on with a tranquil eye, if not with an 

 admiring one, at the march of a regimented rabble in the South, thirty 

 thousand at a time, shouting Erin-go-brah, and flaunting with the 

 established colours of rebellion, the same Government might look 

 with no very alarmed contemplation at loyal and honourable men in the 

 North, marching to tlieir churches to renew, by something of a sacred 

 pledge, their faith to that Constitution, in virtue alone of which the 

 House of Hanover sits on the British throne. This the Orange Lodges 

 did, this they had done often before, and this we shall persist in saying 

 they had every right to do, unless we shall hear better authority tlian Lord 

 Plunket's last opinion on the law of allegiance. But they Iiave been 

 politically to blame : for we can tell the Orangemen that they have been 

 playing the game of the enemy ; that they have done the very thing that 

 the papists and haters of the Constitution desired to see done ; and that 

 they will find the result in increased power to hands that are already all 

 but irresistible. They will not have another 12th of July to await for 

 the demonstration. 



To the last we will not despair of the revival of the British Consti- 

 tution. The time must not always be when one liundred and fifty peers 

 will discover, in the course of a minister's harangue, that they had been 

 in Egyptian darkness for the whole course of their lives before ; nor a 

 House of Commons cheer the man, who had the effrontery to declare 

 that the " Constitution must be broken in upon." In the spirit of the 

 Duke of Cumberland's letter, we say to the Orangemen of Ireland, 

 keep yourselves firm — keep yourselves together — wait the time — turn a 

 deaf ear to all attempts to sting you into tumult — give up your proces- 

 sions, since they will unquestionably be made a snare to you ; but pre- 

 serve your rules, your formation, and your principles ; since by those 

 alone you can hope to retrieve the Constitution of your wise, brave, and 

 religious forefathers. Bide the time, for the time will come. 



The true evil of those disturbances may be akeady traced in the lan- 

 guage of those ministerial instruments which are regularly employed to 

 feel the way. Those journals, overflowing with the due degree of horror 

 at " the atrocious resistance of the North," propose that the whole present 

 magistracy shall be instantly put out of the commission, and a " magis- 

 tracy dependent on Government" be appointed ; we use the words of this 

 comprehensive advice, extraordinary as they are, coming from quarters 

 lately of the most prodigious sensibility to royal and ministerial en- 

 croachments. In other words, the direction of the counties should be 

 taken out of the hands of every man who has a will of his own, and con- 

 signed to those who have none but the wiU of Downing-street, or Bow- 

 street ; until the gentlemen of the county are wholly superseded by 

 menials, clerks, and constables. So much for what we once prided 



