HC Deb 19 February 1884 vol 284 cc1345-8
MR. SEXTON

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, If the Lords of the Treasury will, in regard to the public service in Ireland, enforce the principle and pursue the line of action laid down, in the following terms, in a Treasury Minute of the 15th of March 1836, addressed to all Departments of the Service:— It is the express direction of this Board that every party now a member of an Orange Lodge, or any political society excluding persons of a different religious faith, using secret signs and symbols, and acting by means of associated branches, should immediately withdraw from such society, and that no person in their service shall hereafter become in any way a member or connected with such a society. And if it shall hereafter become known to this Board that any public servant under their control shall, after this warning, either continue or become a member of such society, my Lords will feel it their duty, without hesitation, to dismiss him from the Service?

VISCOUNT CRICHTON

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, If he is aware that since the issue of the Treasury Minute of the 15th March 1836, requiring public servants under the control of the Board to withdraw from the Orange Institution, that society was dissolved, and has since been reconstituted upon a basis expressly excluding the use of oaths, illegal tests or declarations, and secret signs and symbols?

MR. SEXTON

I would also ask whether it is not true that many years after the reconstitution of the Orange Society it was unequivocally condemned by Lord Chancellor Brady and the Prime Minister of that day?

MR. GLADSTONE

With regard to the later Question of the hon. Member for Sligo, I am not able to reply to it without inquiry. With regard to the Question on the Paper, it is one of importance. I was desirous to give a clear answer, and therefore I was obliged to the hon. Member for his courtesy in postponing it at my request. The facts are these, and they are not devoid of interest. Within my own Parliamentary memory the question of the Orange Societies was raised, and attracted a good deal of attention in the House in the years 1835 and 1836. MR. Hume took a very valuable and useful part in these discussions; and so strong was his case felt to be that the Opposition of that day, under Sir Robert Peel, concurred, I may say generally, in the course taken by the then Government. The case against the Orange Lodges at that day was—first of all, that they were extremely extensive; secondly, they reached very considerably into the Army; thirdly, they were under the countenance of a Field Marshal of the Realm, a Prince of the Blood Royal; fourthly, they were exclusive in point of religious profession; and the two other points, which may be considered the principal points, were—one, that they made use of secret signs, and the other, that either in imitation or in the mode of procedure they were attended by religious ceremonials which were considered to partake of the nature of an oath. Under these circumstances, there was a debate in the House of Commons in 1835, and a Committee was appointed. This Committee did not recommend legislation against the Orange Societies; but it recommended that Her Majesty's Government should emphatically discountenance them, pointing to that method of discountenancing which was adopted afterwards in 1836—namely, by issuing the Treasury Minute, the subject-matter of which the hon. Gentleman has quoted. That Minute has never been formally revoked; neither can I find that it has ever at anytime been acted upon. ["Oh!"] The reason of that I have no difficulty in suggesting. It was that the object had been gained, for shortly afterwards—I do not know the precise date—possibly some Gentleman opposite knows—

VISCOUNT CRICHTON

In the same year.

MR. GLADSTONE

I thank the noble Viscount. For in the same year—1836—the Orange Societies were dissolved, and were reconstituted on a basis entirely different, without secret signs, and without religious ceremonial. That being so, I reserve my judgment upon them altogether. It is quite clear that the case of the Orange Society of to-day, whatever it may be, is totally different to the case of the Orange Society which was debated in 1836. And it would not be discreet or considerate on the part of the Government—indeed, I think I could almost say it is not their duty—under these circumstances to proceed to carry into execution a Minute which had remained in abeyance for a long time, but which was aimed at the provisions of a certain Society, which provisions have ceased to exist.

MR. SEXTON

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether, in view of the fact that the Supreme Court at Montreal, in 1882, by a unanimous judgment, declared the Orange Society in Canada to be illegal, he will, on an early day, move for or assent to a Motion for a Select Committee of the House to inquire into and report upon the nature, character, and tendency of the Orange Institution in Ireland, and with power to send for persons, papers, and records?

MR. GLADSTONE

I have made inquiry of the Colonial Office, but we have no information as to that judgment; and I do not think that judgment, of itself, would constitute any reason for our assenting to the appointment of a Parliamentary Committee. I wish to be understood as strictly limiting myself to the terms of the answer I have given, and as conveying no opinion on any other matter.