IRELAND.

New Zealander, Volume 4, Issue 233, 23 August 1848, Page 2

IRELAND.

Secret Information— Plots op Insurrection. —The Dublin Warder bays — 14 There caa be no doubt that the extraordinary centralization of tioops in the capital upon the 17th requires explanation. The leading article of the United Irishman, and the dull exhortations of Mr; John O'Connell, furnish no warrant for the unprecedented exertions which, it is stated, nearly doubled the garrison of Dublin upon that day. No speeches or plans, of which the public is in possession, are enough to account for preparations at once so overwhelming and so cautiously minute. Now, it is scarcely to be supposed that military dispositions upon such a scale would h&ve been mude without some much stronger reason than any apparent upon the surface ; and we ate, therefore, by no weans surprised to learn

that the vast preparations of the I7tb, for the defence of Dublin, were instituted and completed not merely upon the evidence of public events and speeches, but upon private information of a momentous and astounding kind. The precise nature and extent of this information has not reached vi. One element in it, however, is itated to be the fact— that at a private meeting of a certain society in this city, an attempt to surprise the Castle of Dublin upon the 17th was long and earnestly discussed, and that two of the members •whose name s arc stated, but whom we forbear to mention, undertook to examine the avenues, entrances, &c, of the Castle, with a view to the piacticability of the project, and actually completed their inspection and reported thereupon to the committee who had deputed them— that the discussion was then resumed, and, after much and vehement debate, the design abandoned for the present. Informations to I his effect have, we believe, been actually sworn. This, to be sine, we cannot aver 'upon authority; but, putting the matter hypothetically. if such evidence is actually ■mr the hands of the government, why is it not acted ifpon .' Arc these times to wink at treason ?'' Rumoured Design to Assassinate Lord Clarendon. — It is stated (s?ys the hvening Herald of Thursday) that hit Excellency Lord Clarendon received, some days previous to the memorable 17th, an anonymous letter, informing him that he was to be fired at in S\ Patrick's Hall during the ball. This circumstance— much more naturally than any appreheniion of an emeutr. — would account for the extreme anxiety apparent throughout the evening in his lixcellency's countenance. The Pilot gives the following further particulars :— •• The Dublin Herald of last night, (says our contemporary,) states that the Earl of Clarendon was handed a letter ou St. Patrick's night, cautioning him that he would be assassinated at the ball. We have reason to believe this statement truethat a person handed a note to one of the attendants at the door, telling him to give it to his Excellency, and then hurriedly departed. The note (which is laid to have contained the words— 'Beware ! you will be assassinated in the room!') was not, we are confident, written by a Iteptaler." Executions. — At Roscomraon, on 2nd March, Thomas Donahue underwent the extreme penalty of the law, for the minder of the Rev. John Lloyd, in November last. Our reader* are awar^, that Donohue on his trial, admitted that he was one of the two who committed this ioul murder, but would not say who fned the fatal shtt Yesterday, he admitted the whole of what was sworn in evidence, by the boy who identified him, and sut in the gig with his master, the Orcensed At Naa*, on Thursday, the wretched man who was convicted at the late as,i'/ei,of the murder of a man named Smith, (who had been in the employ of the Great Southern and Western Railway Company), at Ballybro|)hy, in the Queen'i County, underwent the extreme penalty of the law in front of the goal at Maryborough. Although it was market day, not the slightest ezcuement appeared amongit the people, and the peisons pietent, did not exceed 300, with the txception of the military and police.—