THE ORANGE ADDRESS.

Evening Star, Issue 8154, 1 March 1890, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE ORANGE ADDRESS.

TO THE EDITOR, Sir, — In America there is a certain class of speakers whoso utterances are usually known by the term “bunkum,” and are generally taken at their woith. lam sure Her Majesty the Queen must bo as tired of Orange addresses as the President of the United States is of “ office-seekers ” —and for this she has good reason. At the commencement of her reign her greatest enemies were Orangemen, and they had their plans fully matured and in operation to place another party on the British throne. There were no prayers to the “ God of Heaven” then on the Queen’s behalf, unless on the same principle as the Scotch minister prayed for Prince Charlie. Even the “National party ” never selected another to fill the throne when the Queen was dethroned. The reference in the Orange address to that “party” strongly reminds mo of Satan reproving sin. “Codlin’s your Mend, not Short,” can be read between the lines in that famous and flowery document. Is it necessary to remind the Orangemen of Dunedin of the undisputed fact that if the Orangemen of 1837 had had their way of it, the integrity of the Empire of Queen Victoria would not now be much to speak of ? Her Majesty knows well, or ought to know, “ the danger that arises from the secret plans of designing men,” foi her first difficulty was to do with the secret designing of Orange lodges ! What was that but “filling the land of our fathers with strife ” ? If, therefore, the Queen “in her wisdom’ considers the diabolical action of the Orange lodges in 1837, etc., she will treat the address with the contempt it deserves. She is, however, of too forgiving a nature, and the usual letter will in due time be received from Sir Henry Ponsonby. The whole tenor of the address is “lam holier than thou.” It is, in short, the now wellknown cry of that well-known character who a good many years ago went up to the temple to pray. There is lawless oppression not only in Roman Catholic Ireland, but, sad to say, in Presbyterian Scotland, where the landlords are Tories and props of the Orange faith, just the same as in Ireland Toryism is a characteristic of Orange belief. In the North of Scotland quite recently the people were half starving, having spent all their means paying exorbitant rents to Tory landlords. Landlords and Orangemen in the House of Commons denied that the people were in want, and that Highland landlords were “ the best in the world ” ; that the people were refusing to pay their “justrents.” The “Angel of peace” that was sent was a regiment of soldiers and a few gunboats, with orders from the Tory Sheriff Ivory to shoot the people if they did npt pay their rents. “Facts, however, followed the fictions.” The Queen appointed a commission to inquire, and the result was the rents were in moat cases reduced by half, and in some instances as much as 70 or 80 per cent. This was the result of agitation. What has Orangeism done for Ireland or anywhere else compared to agitation ? Of course they started “ Pigottism,” and they are now the laughing stock of the world. At Home the chief work of the Orangemen is scandalising Mr Gladstone, and altogether their whole career is an ecclesiastical “bunkum.”—l am, etc., K. M‘L. Dunedin, February 25,