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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
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