T h e number of members n o w under the jurisdiction of the Victorian Grand Lodges is 8300. T h e total worth of funds, ,£31,365 17s. id.; the amount paid for sick pay during the year, ,£5005 12s. 3d.; and the amount paid for doctors' attendance and medicine, ,£8655 ; the funeral claims paid for same period amounted to ^ 1 7 5 0 . T h e r e are 6 3 Lodges in Victoria. Contrast this with the following : — A t the half-yearly meeting, May, 1867, there were n Lodges, numbering 500 members, and the cash balance amounted to ,£111 19s. 9d. T h e Grand United Druids owe m u c h of their very marked success to their able and untiring Secretary, M r . James J. Brenan, w h o has undoubtedly done for the Druids in modern times m u c h as Greeves did for the Oddfellows forty years before, and from neither of the Brotherhoods can the name of either be even nominally dissociated.
ORANGEISM.
An Orange Confederacy has existed in the colony from an early date, and I include it as a Secret Society, using private signs, under the heading of the " Mystic Tie " because of its passwords, rather than that it is in any manner analagous to either Freemasonry or Oddfellowship. T h e Church of R o m e has persistently set its face against Freemasonry. Oddfellowship was held in almost equal disfavour, though in some R o m a n Catholic communities it is tolerated ; but modern Orangeism, which was unknown at the era of the Battle of the Boyne, which it affects to celebrate, has, especially out of Ireland, been so intolerably offensive, and so incompatible with the growing liberality of public opinion, as to render this short explanation necessary. Orangeism in Port Phillip is believed to have originated with the inception of the Melbourne Corporation in 1842, to be used as an instrument in influencing the elections. T h efirstResident Judge (Willis) was said to have been its primary suggestor, though Mr. J. P. Fawkner publicly wrote that it was initiated by Mr. J. C. King (thefirstT o w n Clerk), and by Mr. William Kerr (one of the first Aldermen). King commenced legal proceedings against Fawkner, who, to stave off an action for libel, unconditionally apologized, and so far exonerated King. Others traced it to the Rev. Dr. Lang, who had more than once essayed the role of a religious incendiary in Port Phillip ; but m y impression is that it was imported in the guise of a small rabies from the North of Ireland in the latter part of 1842, by some dozen fanatics w h o settled down un-quarantined in the then small town. T h e germs of the contagion so introduced were very weak ; the poison was barely preserved by a spark of vitality, and through incessant nursing was kept in a faintflickeruntil the following year, when thefiercepersonal antagonism that sprang out of the district general election between Dr. Lang and M r . Edward Curr blew the flicker into a blaze. A n Association was then formed under the grandiloquent designation of " T h e Grand Loyal Orange Institution of Port Phillip," but soon enlarged into " T h e Grand Protestant Confederation of Australia Felix." T h efirstmeetings were held at what was k n o w n as " Yarra House," now the Port Phillip Club Hotel, in Flinders street. It was then for a time in Fawkner's possession, and he lent it to the Brethren as a Liberty Hall; but shortly after, quarrelling in his amusing waywardness with some of the more prominent members, he treated them to a peremptory notice to quit, and they had to clear out, and take up their quarters somewhere else. For a while they put up at the Bird in Hand, an insignificant tavern in Little Flinders street, whence they moved to other hotels until, by a perseverance which deserves credit, they purchased an allotment of land at the corner of Stephen and Little Collins Streets. T h e Orange Confederation always conducted its proceedings with so much privacy that little of them is to be found reported in the Melbourne journals. F e w persons of any recognized social status were ever enrolled amongst its members, though at periods of contested elections, candidates of good position did not disdain to indulge in politicalflirtationto secure the yellow vote. T h e affiliated Orangemen, however, stuck manfully to their work, and employed a zeal and indefatigableness well worthy of imitation. In November, 1882, the then position of Victorian Orangeism was thus authoritatively stated by a Melbourne journal: " A s years rolled on, new Lodges were established in the city and suburbs, and the old building becoming too small for their requirements, rooms had to be hired at the
