IMPUDENT ANNOVANCE.

Evening Star, Issue 3557, 17 July 1874, Page 3

IMPUDENT ANNOVANCE.

2’o the Editor. Sir,—lb is to be said of the Orangemen of Dunedin and elsewhere that they are always loyal citizens—that they, at least, are always free from suspicion. Their fathers maintained the Crown and Protestant principles, their sons uphold the British Constitution ; and this being so, should they not receive the Queen’s protection, and is there any reason why they should be subject

to the annoyance I will narrate ? A large number attended the 12th of July celebration, and when some of them were entering, one or two men, hanging about the street in front, first took stock of each visitor, and then v: rote his name on a bit of paper. These * its will, no doubt, be quietly banded round by the members of a body (which, by the way, has no secret societies) to jeer and sneer at the p u'ties. Protestants ! yonr sympathies ! la that for which our fathers fought to bo taken from us by ridicule? ! know >-hat young men brought up in these Colonies will not attend an Orange meeting, and. the reason of this is not that our principles are repulsive to them—they cannot be to clear reason but because of false ideas concerning cosmopolitanism and toleration. It would appear that the apprehension of ]aers and annoyances from outsiders forms a still more powerful deterrent. The question was put to me en Monday night, with an impudent jocoseness and assumption of familiarity : “Are you an Orangeman going to the Orange blow-out ?” The interrogator was asked what business that was of hia, and the answer oame in a Connaught brogue: “Oh, I’m reporting for the Press.” It is by such means, and by handing men’s names round secretly to bring them into ridicule, that our cause is injured. We should counteract such schemes. They have found street tights won’t do, and that this insidious system works on the rising generav^ Q ’ I hop® that at future Orange meetings Mr Weldon will courteously send a policeman to turn away hangers-on and dawdlers from about lodge and social raertings, as this system of watching “who goes in,” to be ridiculed afterwards, may readily lead to a breach-of the peace.—Yours truly. _ , Ulster. Dunedin, July 15,