The Attorney-General, Sir C. Russell, who answered Lord Randolph Churchill,
made a speech which, we are told, pro- duced a great impression, but which reads like any other Home- rule speech by a moderate and able man. His main argument was that the Union had failed, and was proved to have failed by that appalling condition of Ireland on which opponents of the Bill dilated. There had been a Coercion Bill of one kind or another every five or six years since the Union; but a Coercion Bill was like a weight on a spring, it operated only while the weight was there. Of course, the spring might be broken, but had that been the case ? He main- tained that if the Bill passed, there was " a large probability " that it would produce content in Ireland ; and while con- demning the Parnellites with unexpected frankness, pleaded the provocation they had endured from British tyranny. Sir Charles Russell, though no Parnellite, is an old and consistent Home-ruler, but, like every Irishman who has spoken on the Bill, including Mr. Parnell, he leaves on us an impression that something in it discontents him, and deprives him of any warmth in its defence. He accepts it as equivalent to Home-rule, but it is not Home- rule itself to him. We wonder where the root of bitterness is, for it is not, as English Radicals fancy, the exclusion of Irish Members from Parliament.
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