y must effect.

But if we are surprised at the conduct of the government in complacently
witnessing, for four years, the existence of a state of things in a
portion of the United Kingdom itself, which was a "serious disgrace to
the age, and to the government, and the country in which we live,"
without endeavouring, by the enactment of more stringent laws, to
correct it, the evasions, by means of which they now seek to palliate
their neglect, and the strange want of perspicacity which they display
in not being able to discover the real source of mischief, or their
timidity in not daring to denounce it, must naturally excite our
astonishment. Let any man read the reported speech of the Home
Secretary, and from it he would never be able to discover that there
existed at this moment, in that portion of the empire, so disgraced by
crime and distracted by dissensions, an Association whose whole
occupation is to disseminate falsehood and preach sedition--an organized
band of men who levy tribute on their dupes, and who, in return for
their pence, administer political poison to the minds of their
victims--a political body, whose interest it is that acrimony, and
ill-will, and civil strife, should prevail; because in the storm of
passions which they evoke, they reap the harvest of pelf on which they
live--whose acts have been pronounced by the tribunals of their country
to be illegal, and whose leaders have been denounced by this individual
minister as "convicted conspirators"--an Association whose doctrines,
preached by a political priesthood and enforced by a sanguinary mob,
have rendered life and property insecure, and the quiet existence of
independence and industry impossible.

The ministry admitted the extent of this evil, when they prosecuted "the
political martyrs;" yet now, when the power of the Conciliation Hall
conspirators is more dangerous, because more time has been given them to
consolidate their strength--in laying before Parliament the condition of
Ireland, and in referring to the causes by which it has been produced,
her Majesty's servants affect an utter ignorance of the existence of a
body which they heretofore thought it necessary to arraign, and by their
silence tacitly exculpate from all blame those men at whose doors they
formerly, and with justice, laid all the blood which has been shed, and
all the crime which has been committed in Ireland.

See the quibbles by which the Home Secretary seeks to make t