the
circumstance is introduced here, rather than in the parliamentary
history of the year, because it places in a clearer view the progress of
the Irish insurrection, and the government policy in respect to it. His
lordship, after a pause in which he betrayed considerable emotion, moved
for leave to bring in a bill to empower the lord-lieutenant, or other
chief governor or governors of Ireland, to apprehend and detain,
until the first of March, 1849, such persons as he should suspect of
conspiring against her majesty's person and government. The noble lord
having expressed his deep regret at being compelled to suspend the
constitutional liberties of Ireland, and declared that, in his opinion,
such a measure was absolutely necessary for the preservation of life and
property in Ireland, for the prevention of the effusion of blood, and
for the stopping of insurrection, proceeded to state the grounds upon
which he rested his proposition. He considered it would be necessary for
him to prove three things:--First that the present state of things in
Ireland was fraught with evil; that it threatened danger; that we were
on the eve of an outbreak, if not timely prevented. Secondly, that there
were means sufficient to produce great evils and dangers unless some
measures should be adopted to counteract them. Thirdly, that the measure
he proposed was the most appropriate for its purpose. He did not propose
to rest his case on any secret information known only to the government;
but he would rest it on facts patent, notorious, and palpable. He then
traced the history of the Irish Confederation, establishing, from the
manifestoes published in the _Felon_ and _Nation_ newspapers, that the
determination of these confederates was to entirely abolish the imperial
government; to take away from the queen all authority in Ireland; to
annihilate all the rights of property; to hold up the hope of plunder to
those who would break their oaths of allegiance and join in rebellion;
and to hold up the threat of depriving all those of their property
who would remain fast to their allegiance, and refuse to assist in the
insurrection. One of these manifestoes, entitled, "The Value of the
Irish Harvest," set forth that there was growing on the Irish soil
eighty millions of produce, and declared that it would be for the new
Irish Council of Three Hundred to decide how this produce should be
apportioned: thus showing that, by one sweeping confiscation, the