The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1844-04-23 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

THE MERCURY AND THE ORANGEMEN OF  LIVERPOOL.  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 discovered 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 "whether the Orangemen, failing in their design upon the army"—(what design 1)—" have not contrived to introduce 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 police 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 di,qualifying circumstance. At the present crisis of the country, we should imagine that the appearance of Repealers and Ribbonmen in such a force was infinitely more dangerous than that of Orangeme%; and of the former we are credibly informed there are many amongst the police. We may info:m 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 sold, 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 hostility with which the Mercury views Orangemen, whilst he can tolerate the murderous system of Ribbonism and the seditious proceedings, and anti-English projects, of Repealers. Orangemen are Protestants; and our contemporary's sympathies are with popery. Orangemen are !oral to the throne and the constitution ; and our contcmAry would willingly see both trampled beneath the feet of a ruthless democracy. Further, the Orangemen of Liverpool contributed mainly to overthrow the domination of local Whig-Radicalism ; and ." hinc illm urns"— hence the spluttered wrath of this pompous scribbler. With respect, bye the bye, to the recent alle;ed " disorderly proceedings" of a few ladw, bearing Orange banners, &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 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 fight, disgraceful to a civilized country might take place, 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.