THE ORANGE AND THE GREEN.
VOT one in five, perhaps, of English newspaper readers will Zr study the little debate of Tuesday, on the Irish Party Processions' Act, but it may turn out to have been one. of the most important of the Session. We do not wonder at the perplexity displayed both by Mr. Chichester Fortescue and his chief, or at the demarid for an adjournment to enable the Premier to consult his colleagues. For the first time since the new Parliament met, the new fact of Ireland, the alliance between the Catholic and Orange democracies, became an operative reality. The Member for Belfast, who proposed the repeal of the Act, is the chosen representative of the rebellious Orangemen, who have cast off the authority of their old leaders, who declare that the commonwealth is above the creeds, and intend, if ascendancy is abolished, to devote themselves in concert with Catholics to a strictly Irish programme, including a peaceful revolution in the tenure of land. The O'Donoghue, who seconded him, on the other hand, is in a special sense the representative of the Catholic democracy, of the men who value tenant-right even more than Catholicism, whose ultimate ideal is an Ireland organized socially like Switzerland, and who are for the present in sympathy, if not in policy,Repealers. The tone of the Catholic Nationalist was almost as marked as his position. It signified, and indeed avowed, a cordial union with his old enemies, and this for purposes very much greater than the repeal of a single measure of repression. To resist such a combination at the moment when they desire to do sympathetic justice to Ireland, is hard for such a Government as the present, more especially when the demand is one with which in principle they must heartily sympathize. The Party Processions' Act cannot be defended by honest Liberals, except on the ground of a temporary expediency. The central idea of our national organization is that everybody is at Liberty to display his religious and political preferences in any way he likes, subject to the general laws, and that no sect or organization not opposed to universally admitted principles of morality shall be specially restricted. Even wild creeds like the Mormon are protected by the law, and a Scotchman may parade his national emblems through the centre of London if he likes with entire impunity. Ministers in Liverpool are protected in outrageous attacks upon the Catholic religion, and semi-Catholics in London are allowed to denounce Protestantism as an invention of a dissolute monk and a lecherous king. Neither the followers of Murphy nor of Garibaldi are repressed by law, and a religious riot is treated by the magistrates exactly as a political riot would be. It is felt that the kw will punish, and therefore prevent, open disorder, and that s ort oropen disorder the cure for violence of sentiment is freedom for violence of expression. It is only in Ireland that we attempt, like a Continental government, to make symbols and phrases penal, to imprison people for wearing cockades with a party signification, and to fine drunken men because their abusiveness takes an ecclesiastical or political form. The consequence is that we give to such manifestations a new meaning and force ; that yellow banners which would be else of no more significance than the mystic symbols of Masonry, and green ribbons as innocent as Odd Fellows' scarves, become invitations to violence and strife. As usually happens in Ireland, too, the law, repressive as applied to the Orangemen, is oppressive as applied to the Catholics. There is no motive whatever for carrying Orange banners, except to display party feeling ; but the green is a national colour, which might be worn by a Protestant Tory as well as a Catholic democrat, and in suppressing it we are outraging a feeling which in itself is entitled to the highest respect, which in England and Scotland is respected to the full, and which, if a bad history had not extinguished our usual sense, we should deliberately foster. Would an Irish Guard fight worse because it charged by the side of scarlet and tartan in green and gold,—because, that is, if victorious, it would have a separate place in the eyes and the memories of the common enemies of the Empire It is by honouring, not by repressing, national pride that we have bound Scotland to ourselves, till in all serious matters both nations forget that it is not a century and a half ago since tartan and scarlet were as hostile as scarlet and green are now held by the law to be. One of the very first duties of a Government honestly bent on justice to Ireland is to restore the national colour to its post of honour, to organize Irish regiments, to establish Irish anniversaries, to prove to Irishmen that in all matters of sentiment, as in all matters of interest, their rights are the same as ours ; that we are all equal before opinion, as well as before the law. The colours are marks of rebellion ? Stuff. There sit the O'Donogliue and Mr. Johnston, just as much and just as little rebellious as any other representatives of discontented constituencies, just as ready, we doubt not, to serve the Empire, if only the Empire will give them work, and leave off taunting them with their inferiority in being Irish. As for history, the yellow ribbon has been for two hundred years. distinctively loyal, and we have not fought the green half as often as we have fought the tartan.
But, say the supporters of the Act, the badges are used as provocations, and if not prohibited there will be bloodshed on the 12th of July. Mr. Dowse says that, and Mr. Dowse ought to know, being Member for Derry ; and he has no particular reason to uphold the Act, is indeed willing to abolish it after another year or two. If he is right, then, as a matter of expediency, Government may be right in delaying the repeal of the Coercion Bill on haberdashers ; but to us, as outside observers, it is hard to see how he can possibly be in the right. How does the prohibition to wear the yellow, for instance, stop rioting ? By exasperating the party pride of Orangemen ? Or by soothing the Catholics, who are equally forbidden their own distinctive emblem ? Or by enabling Government to punish rioting on a ridiculous and oppressive pretext, instead of punishing it under perfectly just and reasonable laws V The anniversaries will be kept all the more for the Act, and all the more ill-temperedly. Surely the natural revenge of men irritated at sight of tho yellow is to hoist the green, and it is only when prevented from that rejoinder in millinery that they resort to arms. If the common law is not strong enough to keep the peace, strengthen the common law. We are not writing in the interests of any maudlin sentiment about the rights of man or the dignity of free citizens. Order has to be maintained in civilized countries, and we are not half sharp enough in maintaining it. A properly organized Government would have suppressed the last riots in Belfast in half-an-hour with three volleys of Enfield bullets poured in impartially on Orange ruffians and Catholic madmen both. That is the way the New York polio& stops the riots between Irish and Germans, and the way our own Government in India deprecates religious discussion between Sheeahs and Soothes ; and it is in the end by far the more merciful and civilized way, because once done, it compels the factions to confine themselves to their tongues and their haberdashery, and leave each other's bodies alone. If it is necessary to prohibit the carrying of arms in a procession, prohibit it at once, and for the Three Kingdoms all alike. Nothing can justify that practice except oppression sufficient to justify insurrection, and insurgents can break the new law as well as any other. Mr. Johnston says, and we believe says truly, that if Government will only " protect " processions of all kinds, that is, will send a body of armed constables with
them, there will be no bloodshed ; but if that is not enough, let us go farther, and strengthen the law till it is as swift and as irresistible as in Continental countries, where a riot is treated as if it were a half-developed revolt. But let us enforce it against disorder instead of against opinions, put down revolvers instead of ribbons, and imprison pugilists instead of pipers. Nothing restrains men from violence like ordinary law pitilessly enforced, as if it were a law of nature, and not of man. An Orangeman and a Nationalist are both of them.very excitable people, but suppose either of them knew as certainly as he knows that fire will burn that the penalty of a riot would be twelve hours of toothache. He would be as quiet as an Essex hind, and avoid riot as instinctively as he avoids the east wind. If the magistrates cannot be trusted on account of religious feeling, appoint stipendiary Gallios caring for none of those things ; if juries are false to their oaths,—and we abhor the sort of necessity which is said to exist for packing them,—send all crimes against public security before the judges sitting as jurors ; in fact, do anything required to make rioting disagreeable to rioters. But leave opinion to exhale itself in talk, and emblems, and ceremonials, which, if they were ten times as flaring as they have ever been, could never come near in deadly meaning to the new one just invented by party feeling, the open-air prayer of a whole township for vengeance upon its enemies. That is the sort of ceremonial to fire men's blood, and how are we going to stop that ? We cannot stop it at all, but we can prevent the men who pray from becoming the agents of Heaven ; and the way to do it is to punish outrage and disorder unrelentingly, but to leave opinion alone. If we do, and do justice besides, swiftly, completely, and cordially, Fenianism and Orangeism will yet be what Jacobitism has become—a half-poetic recollection.
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