population professing the religion of the State, claiming the confidence and support of Government, and vaunting exclusive loyalty, they assume the lofty tone of protecting their fellowsubjects, whom they proscribe, (of course as enemies) from associating with them in the laudable purpose of defending their good King against all his enemies, whether rebels to their God, or to their country. Every loyal subject is by principle and disposition at the command of his Sovereign for these purposes. An instrument of dissimulation never speaks the plain truth. Associations to combine against the King's cnemies, in a well ordered State, are mischievous and dangerous, in proportion to the paucity of the associators. Where all, who feel and avow their duty associate, they are useless, and let down the paramount duty of allegiance. Close and proscriptive associations essentially create discontent, jealousy, or enmity in every excluded individual. Where co-operation in the work of loyalty is rejected, protection becomes insult and short are the intervals between insult, provocation, and resentment. The fellow-subject, who offers his protection to 500 neighbours, some superior, some equal, some inferior to himself, can never command the confidence of those, whom his legitimate or usurped power proscribes and degrades. Further comment.: Tolera The fanatical cant of associating to repel and punish rebels to God is indignantly, to be reprobated. It is an impious usurpation of the high prerogative of the Deity to judge the conscience of man, which is only penetrable to the all scrutinizing eye. A man may be a rebel to his King: he may be an enemy to his country. The Orangeman in depopulating the county of Armagh, was an enemy to his country, not strictly by that act a rebel to his King. Whether he were a rebel to his God in burning out and exterminating the Catholic, merely because he worshipped God in his own manner, is not for human tribunal to decide. But law and common sense refute the buffoonery of Dr. Duigenan, that such acts of atrocity can spring from loyalty. It was a discovery reserved for this illuminated tion of King Society of exterminators, that the British conWilliam. stitution was obtained under King William. That he was called over to England to support that constitution, and that it was preserved by conquest in Ireland is true, and devoutly is it wished, that William's principles of toleration (he was a Presbyterian) were imitated by those, who disgrace his name by their savage intolerance.* The five leading Orangemen, who came forth *Fitting it is, that the ostentatious supporters of the Protestant ascendancy, in honor and commemoration of William of Orange, forth on this occasion with all the pomp of promise, could little expect credit for their professions. The only public deeds, by which their Society, as a body, was then known to the public, were its feats in the county of Armagh. Now it is an obvious, and indeed unavoidable appeal to every man cognizant of them, how far the Society of Orangemen, (being but an extension of the Society of Peep of Day Boys) could in the year 1797 truly assert, that "the idea of injuring any one on account of his religious opinions never entered into our hearts: we regard every loyal subject as our friend, be his religion what it may: we have no enmity, but "to the enemies of our country." It will be more than difficult to verify these assertions, when brought to bear upon the persecutions of Armagh. Orange should know, that after that Monarch had taken the same coronation oath, as has ever since been taken by all his successors, he offered to the Duke of Tyrconnell, in order to induce him to surrender Limerick, the following terms for the Irish Catholics, viz:-1. The free exercise of their religion. 2. Half the churches of the kingdom. 3. Half the employments civil and military, if they pleased. 4. The moiety of their ancient properties. These proposals he offered to get sanctioned by an English act of parliament. (Vide my History of Ireland, 2 vol. p. 12.) There also may be seen many traits and proofs of the natural tolerancy of William's disposition, which pointedly contradicts the wicked principles and sanguinary spirit, with which the Orangemen have endeavoured to tarnish his memory and disgrace his name, The ad Armagh. It must be further observed, that these guarantees of all the Orange lodges in Dublin go no further, than to answer for those, who had been initiated into the Society, after the atrocities of Armagh had been perpetrated. dress de- address nies not However artfully and strongly this Orange may have been worked up to delude the the oath popular mind, and throw a varnish over the five mination, leading Orangemen, which would not cover their of exter original founders, yet it cannot elude the slightest observation, that the address contains no denial, that the oath of extermination had been taken by the original members of the institution. The advertisers for themselves and fellow masters, (their subsequent conduct will shew how sincerely) undertake only to answer for the workings of their own hearts, not for those of the original framers of the Society or of the Institution at large. To defend the King against his enemies is a straight forward duty well known to every loyal subject. No specific association or obligation can strengthen it. To question a man's earnestness in performance of that duty is an actionable offence. What can more deeply wound the feelings of a loyal people, than the monopolizing boast of some favoured minions, that they, exclusively of the great population, are ready to resist the external and internal enemies of the country? But could every other difficulty difficulty be cleared away, yet would not the waters of the Atlantic wash out that damned spot of their sworn secrecy*. It impudently bids defiance "The Orangemen have to lament the folly or misfortune of having had their cause advocated by Sir Richard Musgrave, a wholesale dealer in falsity and fiction. By way of blunting the edge of just indignation at the nature of the rules and regulations of the Orange Societies, which he foresaw might in the process of time come to light, even through the dark veil of their secret oath, and of imposing upon the public in the mean while, their zealous defender has given in his Strictures (p. 225.) seven resolutions, which he says were fabricated by the enemies of the Orangemen, for the purpose of exciting in the breasts of the lower class of Catholics the most malignant and vindictive passions. One should have imagined, that the sagacious Baronet had, in 1804, when he published his Strictures, (which, by the bye, were never fairly entered) been long enough in the Customs to have learnt, how much better for use genuine than counterfeit commodities were. 1. Resolved unanimously, that each and every member be furnished with a case of horse pistols and a sword: also, that every member shall have 12 rounds of ball cartridges. 2. Resolved, that every man shall be ready at a moment's warning. 3. Resolved, that no member is to introduce a Papist or Presbyterian, Quaker or Methodist, or any persuasion but a Protestant. 4. Resolved, that no man wear Irish manufacture, or give employment to a Papist. 5. Resolved, that every man shall be ready at a moment's warning, to burn all the chapels and meeting-houses in the city and county of Dublin. 6. Resolved, |