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Updated: June 4, 2025
And I have no doubt, that had the other portions of it been conceived and acted on in the same spirit, Orangeism would have become a very different system from that which under its name now influences the principles, and inflames the passions of the lower classes of Protestants, and stimulates them too frequently to violence, and outrage, and persecution itself, under a conviction that they are only discharging their duties by a faithful adherence to its obligations.
Three Orangemen, mechanics, were arrested and tried for the offence, but acquitted on a technical defect of evidence; a general feeling of indignation was excited among all classes in consequence, and it is questionable if Orangeism, in Dublin, ever recovered the disgust occasioned by that dastardly outrage.
Scant attention was paid to our recommendation then and it is not even remembered for us by the protagonists of a later time. In all our efforts to conciliate Ulster and to allay the alarms it undoubtedly felt owing to the growth and aggressiveness of the Catholic Order of Orangeism, we never received encouragement or support from the Government or the Irish Party.
In that passage it would appear that the very existence of a Church is forgotten altogether; for Orangeism is termed 'an institution, whose chief object whatever political shape it may assume is to preserve the Protestant religion. I will now, before I close this batch, direct your attention to one or two passages that prove most distinctly the fact, that there stand clear in this oath of an Orangeman, principles, founded on foregone practices and conclusions, which never should have existence in a country so situated as this is.
For, owing to an inherent haziness in the theses and aims of Orangeism, there are Orders in the Society as hard to attain as those German university degrees which no man ever took and had his eyesight perfect afterward; though, to be sure, there is a certain difference in the relative value of the two species of attainment.
But it is a conundrum of psychology rather than of politics. It may seem rude to say so, but Orangeism consists mainly of a settled hallucination and an annual brainstorm. No one who has not been present at a Twelfth of July procession can realise how completely all its manifestations belong to the life of hysteria and not to that of reason.
"I think I have shown you that there is little in the Church of Ireland that is likely to regulate or purify the spirit of Orangeism when coming in contact with itself.
What has fostered the Anti-Irish feeling among Irish Protestants for the last hundred years has undoubtedly been the fell system of Orangeism, which has caused so much hatred and bloodshed among men who, whatever their race or creed, are now children of the one common soil. The Orangeman looked upon himself as part of a foreign garrison, holding the "Papishes" in subjection.
And she may be quite assured that the law, driven back on its ultimate sanction of force, will very sharply and very amply vindicate itself. But it is not courteous to the reader to detain him among such unrealities as Sir Edward Carson's Civil War. Treason, that is to say platform treason, is not so much an eccentricity as a habit of Orangeism.
When an Irishman does make up his mind to serve the other side he is very much determined. There is but the meditation of two minutes between Landleaguing and Orangeism, between boycotting landlords and thorough devotion to the dear old landlord.
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