The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-04-23 00:00:00

THE MERCURY AND THE ORANGEMEN OF

LIVERPOoI:

Our contemporary of Friday, who has been a little out
of temper last week, is especially waspish against the
Orange body in this town. He appears to have disco-
vered that some awful calamity, to the state and to the
borough of Liverpool, is to be feared from the spread of
Orangeism amongst us; and suggests that the attention
of the authorities should be directed to an enquiry "whe-
ther the Orangemen, failing in their design upon the
army"—(what design?)—" have not contrived to intro-
duce members of their body into the police force of this
town, and whether a local Orange grand master is not at
this moment a member of the Town Council and the
Watch Committee."

We shall certainly not attempt to satisfy the Mercury
upon these points; but we must set him right upon one
or two particulars. In the first place, we can assure him
that the army, upon whom Orangemen are said to have
had a design, contains plenty of men professing Orange
principles—sufficient, we trust, to counteract the designs
of Ribbonism in that quarter, and the efforts of Repealers
to sow disaffection in its ranks. With respect to the po-
lice force, we know not whether there are few or many
Orangemen in that body ; and further, we do not know
why the entertaining of Orange principles, which inculcate
peace, law, order, and loyalty, should be a disqualifying
circumstance. At the present crisis of the country, we
should imagine that the appearance of Repealers and Rib-
bonmen in such a force was infinitely more dangerous
than that of Orangemen ; and of the former we are credibly
in'ormed there are many amongst the police. We may in-
form him, moreover, that Orangemen have no " secret
oaths," in the sense attached to the term secret as used
by our contemporary. The oaths which they take are
such as are laid down by various acts of Parliament as
tests of loyalty—are no secret to the government or to
the world—are printed and gold, with a great portion of
their forms, and maybe bought by any one whois master of a
shilling or half-a-crown. If they have any other secrets,
they are only such as they use in common with members
of masonic, oddfellows, and similar orders.
We can readily imagine a reason for the especial hosti-
lity with which the Mercury views Orangemen, whilst he
can tolerate the murderous system of Ribbonism and the
seditious proceedings, and anti-English projects, of Re-
peaters. Orangemen are Protestants; and our contem-
porary's sympathies are with popery. Orangemen ar9
loyal to the throne and the constitution ; and our contem-
porary would willingly see both trampled beneath the feet
of a ruthless democracy. Further, the Orangemen of
Liverpool contributed mainly to overthrow the domina-
tion of local Whig-Radicalism ; and " hint
hence the spluttered wrath of this pompous scribbler.
With respect. bye the bye, to the recent alleged " dis-
orderly proceedings" of a few lads, bearing Orange ban-
ners, &c., which has created so much virtuous horror in
our contemporary towards the Orange society, we are
informed that the disordely parties were not Orangemen I
It served a purpose, however, to dub them so, in order to
cast odium upon a body of men, whose principles are
naturally distasteful to the disloyal. A faction tight, dis-
graceful to a civilized country might take 'dace, and, we
hear, did take place on the same evening ; but the world
heard nothing particular of that in the columns of the
Mercury. Oh no! The bludgeon and poker combatants
were Romanists—not Orangemen.