ABSTRACT
On the front page of its 10 February 1849 issue the Illustrated London News' leading article noted that, during the first week o f the new parliamentary session, two measures concerning Ireland had been debated — coercion and the Poor Law. As usual, the continuation of coercion (centered on the suspension of habeas corpus) passed quickly and with little opposition. Mackay’s writer insisted that such measures were necessary. He went out of his way to praise Lord Clarendon, 'who by the judicious use of the powers in his hands’ had prevented in Ireland the kinds of insurrections that had convulsed Europe during the previous year. (There was no credit given to the Irish themselves or to their leaders.) This rather elaborate praise turns out, however, to have been a polite way of preparing the ground for the ILN s major dissent from governmental policy.
