as a
certain Colonel Fairman, who held an important position in what may be
called its military hierarchy, and was undoubtedly at one time
intrusted by the Duke of Cumberland with the fullest authority to act
as the emissary of the Grand Master to make known his will and convey
his orders. Whether the Duke of Cumberland ever really entertained the
project ascribed to him of seizing the crown for himself and shutting
out the Princess Victoria can, in all probability, never be known as a
certainty; but there can be no question that his actions often
justified such a belief, and that many of his most devoted Orange
followers looked up to him as the resolute hero of such a project to
save England from Whigs and Liberals, and Roman Catholics, and mob
orators, and petticoat government, and all other such enemies to the
good old state of things as established by the wisdom of our ancestors
and the Act of Settlement. The whole question was raised in the House
of Commons during the session of 1835 by Joseph Hume, the consistent
and persevering advocate of sound economic doctrine, of political
freedom, of peace, retrenchment, and reform. Hume obtained the
appointment of a committee to inquire into the whole subject, and the
committee had no great difficulty in finding out that Colonel Fairman
had been carrying on, with or without the consent or authority of his
Grand Master the Duke of Cumberland, what must be called a treasonable
conspiracy through the Orange lodges and even through Orangemen who
were actually serving in the King's Army. In 1836 Hume brought up the
question once again and obtained so much support from Lord John
Russell, then acting as Leader of the Government in the House of
Commons, that {279} an address was unanimously voted to the King
calling on him to proclaim the condemnation of the Orange conspiracy.
The Duke of Cumberland disclaimed all treasonable purposes, and
declared that many of the steps taken by Fairman and other Orange
emissaries had been taken without his orders and even without his
knowledge. Fairman disappeared from the scene when the crisis seemed
to become too serious for his personal convenience, and one of the
Orange emissaries, against whom a prosecution was to be instituted, was
removed by a sudden death from the reach of the criminal law. The Duke
of Cumberland announced that he had already, of his own inspiration,
ordered the dissolution of the Orange lodges. The King, in his rep