es, in
view of the prevailing lawlessness and the contempt for life and
property which in the disaffected districts were only too common. In
August the crisis was already so acute that the Government, yielding to
the fears of its Irish advisers, stultified itself by proposing the
renewal of the Arms Bill until the following spring. The step was ill
advised, and provoked much hostile criticism. Lord John did not relish
the measure, but Lord Bessborough declared that Ireland could not be
governed for the moment without it, and as he also talked of throwing
up his appointment, and was supported in this view of the situation by
Mr. Labouchere (afterwards Lord Taunton), who at that time was Chief
Secretary, the Prime Minister gave way and introduced in the House of
Commons proposals which were out of keeping with his own antecedents,
and which he personally disliked. In speaking of Sir Robert Peel's
Coercion Bill in his published 'Recollections,' Lord John makes no
secret of his own attitude towards the measure. 'I objected to the Bill
on Irish grounds. I then thought, and I still think, that it is wrong to
arrest men and put them in prison on the ground that they _may_ be
murderers and housebreakers. They may be, on the other hand, honest
labourers going home from their work.' On the contrary, he thought that
every means ought to be promptly taken for discovering the perpetrators
of crime and bringing them to justice, and he also believed in giving
the authorities on the spot ample means of dealing with the reign of
terror which agrarian outrages had established.

[Sidenote: THE IRONY OF THE SITUATION]

If O'Connell had been at Lord John's side at that juncture, England
might have sent a practical message of good-will to Ireland instead of
falling back on the old policy of coercion. O'Connell had learnt to
trust Russell--as far, at least, as it was possible for a leader of the
Irish people to trust a Whig statesman--and Russell, on the other hand,
was beginning to understand not merely O'Connell, but the forces which
lay behind him, and which rendered him, quite apart from his own
eloquence and gifts, powerful. Unfortunately, the Liberator was by this
time broken in health, and the Young Ireland party were already in
revolt against his authority, a circumstance which, in itself, filled
the Premier with misgivings, and led him to give way, however
reluctantly, to the demand of the viceroy for repressive measures. Lord
Jo