THE GOVERNOR AND THE ORANGE SOCIETY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 50, 15 April 1898, Page 6

THE GOVERNOR AND THE ORANGE SOCIETY.

THE following conclusive letter appeared in the Dunedin Ecening Star of last Saturday. "Catholic Citizen's" temperate and unanswerable letters have done much towards directing public attention to a serious perversion of the viceregal office. Incidentally. they have brought into evidence a curious but constant feature of Orange polemics, namely : the notorious ignorance of the brethren of the facts of Orange history, or their extreme distaste to having the light of day thrown upon the dark and evil doings of what Parliamentary Committees, Royal Commissions, and Protestant judges, statesmen, and writers have over and over again declared to be a disloyal, rebellious, and unchristian association. The letter ot " Catholic Citizen " runs as follows :—: —

Sir, — The various correspondents who have attempted, with more zeal than discretion, to defend the Governor's blunder in getting himself entangle! with the Orange Society would no doubt feel disappointed if no notice were taken of their efforts, so perhaps you will be good enough to find space for a few brief lines.

The only feature worthy of note about the whole of these letters is that not one of your correspondents has made any attempt whatever to meet the points contained in my first communication. '• A Protestant Woman " waxes eloquent about " the Crown, the Constitution, and the Protestant Bible." A " Loyal Ulsterman "is so full of his loyalty that he can write about nothing else, though it has nothing earthly to do with the subject ; while the correspondent " Dunedin," writing in Saturday's issue, favours your readers witn quite an elaborate disquisition on civil and religious liberty and the general principles of the Orange Society. All of these letters are supposed to be written as a reply to mine, yet not one of them so much as touches the points plainly and explicitly stated in my communication. I asserted, first, that the influence of Orangeism w. is invariably in the direction of fomenting religious discord, and of accentuating and perpetuating sectarian animosity. I advanced in support of that assertion, not my own opinion, but the testimony ot a select opinion of the House of Commons whose weighty statement ran as follows :—": — " The obvious tendency and effect of the Orange institution is to keep up an exclusive association in civil and military society, exciting one portion of the people ag.iinst the other ; to increase the rancor and animosity too often, unfortunately, existing between persons of different religious persuasions — to make the Protestant the enemy of the Catholic and the Catholic the enemy of the Protestant." Not one of your correspondents has atttempted to contradict or confute that statement.

I asserted in the second place that whitever might be said fur against Orangeism in Ulster there were no grounds whatever for importing it. with its attendant bitterness and uncharitablenes>, into a young country like ours, where, s p far. all lvligious denominations had been able to work harmoniously together for the co nmon good. This statement also your correspondent-, with surprising unanimity, have left severely alone. As these were the two mam statements in my letter, your readers will be able t-> s^e pi-ec s>.;'y what claim these letters have to be considered a '• reply " to my communication.

I may say here thnt my object in writing vvr.s not to discuss Orangeism, bnt to let it be generally understood that Catholics n< t d and felt the slight that was put upon them, and uere determined, by the constitutional means open to them, to guard a^ain^t a repetition of the insult. That purpose has new been amply served. lam

told that the Governor lays the whole blame for the episode on the mayor, in whose hands, his Excellency is reported to have said, he unreservedly placed himself in the matter of receiving deputations und addresses. What Catholics feel most strongly about, however, is not the receiving of the address, but the fact that the Governor of the colony should have felt it necessary to go out of his way to identify himself with the Orange Society, and to make allusions which a moment's reflection would have shown him could not possibly be other than offensive to Catholics. It is hard to see how Mr Cargill can be saddled with responsibility for that. — I am, etc. A Catholic Citizbx. Dunedin, April f>.