The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1909-07-31
GRAND celebration
OF THE 18TH OF JULY
Followers Of King William
of Pious, Glorious and I'm
mortal Memory Honor the
Anniversary of the Boyne
by Hurting Brickbats and
CobbIestones at Edwards
Irish Constabulary in the
City of Belfast.

SASy VI 0V1A o0Ss
The Dublin Weekly Freeman of July
II has the following to say editorially
of the celebration of the Battle of the
Boyne in the loyal city of Belfast on
July IL:
Once again our dear old friends the
Orangemen have kept the 18th sa
cred, disporting themselves in very
much their customary style-that is
to say, beating drums, listening to
blood and thunder orations, and break
ing the heads of some of the police. 1t
has been so time out of mind, AMI
we dare say it will be SO for many
years to come. For some years past
there has not been anything like Sc
rious riots in Belfast, or, indeed, else
where, on the 18th, but the time-hol-
ored custom of whacking a Papist or
a policeman has never been allowed 10
fall into absolute desuetude. This year
there has been more rioting than for =
long time, and the damage to skulls
and property done by the loyal, law
abiding and peaceful Orange mob has
been severe and serious enough to
prove that they have lost none of their
old cunning and blackguardly instincts
when opportunity offers for disturb
ha Mott Tof 1i,,c
in Belfast adopted the very sensible,
course Of minding their own affairs, SO
1T s-wunld appear that the police alone
suffered at the hands of the upholders
sympathize with the police in such cir
cumstances. 1t is too bad to be beaten
by the loyalists of the Ulster capital,
and all the more so when it is remem-
bered that much of the courage of the
Orange mob is survival of the days
when it was we'll understood thing
that the Orangeman was not to be
roughly handled, that he was to be
given a certain measure Of impuniry
SO long as he only opened Papist heads
with iron bolts and only kicked Papists
have not yet lost the memory of these
halcyon times; they have not yet conf
pletely realized that the day of their
complete and absolute and untrammel-
led impunity has passed and gone for
ever; that now the Papists are recog-
nized as having some rights in the
state and as being entitled to protec-
tion even from Orange mobs.
OF course, nothing could really be
more appropriate to the Twelfth of
July than rioting, roWdyism and blood
shed. The Twelfth is the Festival OF
Rude, Crude, Ignorant Bigotry, of bru-
tai, mean, nay, murderous intolerance
and ascendancy. The demonstrations
of the 18th stand for nearly everything
that can debase the minds of men. On
the Twelfth the Orange crowd ce!e-
brate the kicking down Of the Cath
olic, his plunder, his murder; they
vaunt their own ascendancy, or as
much of 1t as remains to them, and
they crow over those whom our en-
lightened British rulers helped these
Orange crowds to assault and Insult.
1t is, therefore, high festival of cow
ardly and brutal insult, and that be-
ing so, we must confess that we have
always been surprised when" a conf
paratively peaceable 18th could be re-
corded. Violence is so intimately as
ISOLATED with the occasion and with
those who hold revel upon it, that it
seems incongruous to have 18th with
out riot and robbery and bloodshed.
In the old days of course the Dublin
Castle people gave their Orange friends
every possible facility to make the
day as worthy as possible; now there
is less license afforded for law break
ing; the police are allowed to keep q
close eye over the celebrationists; so
that it is to be expected the latter
cannot show as characteristic results
of their demonstrations as in former
times. Still, as we have already SAID,
the old memory of their comparative
impunity has not quite left them, and
they still presume. in unguarded mo-
ments, as it might be said, on their
Orange sashes. The speeches on this
occasion were not at all as humorous