While in Belfast, Russell fell into pecuniary embarrassments.  His generous and confiding nature induced him to go bail for a false friend, and he found himself one morning obliged to meet a claim for L200, which he had no means of discharging except by the sale of his commission.  Russell sold out and retired to Dungannon, where he lived for some time on the residue of the money thus obtained, and during this period he was appointed a Justice of the Peace for the county of Tyrone.  After a short experience of “Justices’ justice” in the North, he retired from the bench through motives alike creditable to his head and heart.  “I cannot reconcile it to my conscience,” he exclaimed one day, “to sit on a bench where the practice exists of inquiring what religion a person is before investigating the charge against him.”  Russell returned, after taking this step, to Belfast, where he was appointed to a situation in the public library of the town, and where he became a regular contributor to the organ of the Ulster patriots, the Northern Star.

In 1796 he was appointed by the United Irishmen to the supreme military command in the county Down, a post for which his military experience not less than his personal influence fitted him, but his political career was soon afterwards interrupted by his arrest on the 26th of September, 1796.  Russell was removed to Dublin, and lodged in Newgate Prison; his arrest filled the great heart of Tone, who was then toiling for his country in France, with sorrow and dismay.  “It is impossible,” he says in his journal, “to conceive the effect this misfortune has on my mind.  If we are not in Ireland in time to extricate him he is lost, for the government will move heaven and earth to ensure his condemnation.  Good God!” he adds, “if Russell and Neilson fall, where shall I find two others to replace them?” During the eventful months that intervened between the date of his arrest and the 19th of March, 1799, poor Russell remained chafing his imprisoned soul, filled with patriotic passion and emotion, in his prison cell in Kilmainham.  On the latter date, when the majority of his associates were dead, and their followers scattered and disheartened, he was transferred to Fort George in Scotland, where he spent three years more in captivity.  The government had no specific charge against him, but they feared his influence and distrusted his intentions, and they determined to keep him a prisoner while a chance remained of his exerting his power against them.  No better illustration of Russell’s character and principles could be afforded than that supplied in the following extract from one of the letters written by him during his incarceration in Fort George:—­“To the people of Ireland,” he writes, addressing an Irish friend and sympathiser, “I am responsible for my actions; amidst the uncertainties of life this may be my valedictory letter; what has occasioned the failure of the cause is useless to speculate on—­Providence orders all things for the best. I am sure the people will never abandon the cause; I am equally sure it will succeed.  I trust men will see,” he adds, referring to the infidel views then unhappily prevalent, “that the only true basis of liberty is morality, and the only stable basis of morality is religion.”