[Sidenote:  T.W.  Russell.]

At last, this was got over, and the time came for T.W.  Russell.  There are few men in the House of Commons who excite such violent dislike on Liberal and Irish Benches as this pre-eminently disagreeable personality.  The dislike is well founded.  It is not because Mr. Russell is rancorous, or has strong opinions; it is because nobody has any faith in his sincerity.  For many years of his life he was a paid teetotal lecturer.  Teetotalism is a counsel of perfection, and teetotallers are estimable men, but the paid platform advocate of teetotalism is never a very attractive personality.  This tendency to shout, and thump the table, and work up the agony—­this eternal pitching of the voice to the scream that will terrify the groundlings, appal the sinner, and bring down the house—­all these things produce a style of oratory which is about as disagreeable as anything in the shape of oratory can be.  Above all things, it is difficult to take the itinerant lecturer seriously, with his smoking meal at home as a reward for his philanthropic efforts.  The whole thing produces on the mind the impression of a clap-trap performance, with no heart or soul underneath all its ravings, bellowings, and dervish-like contortions.

Mr. Russell has ceased to be a teetotal lecturer, and has become a stump orator for the Unionist party, but the scent of the teetotal platform hangs round him still.  He yells, bellows, and twists himself about, puts all his statements with ridiculous exaggeration—­altogether, so overdoes the part that it is only the wildest and emptiest Tory who is taken in by him.  What spoils the whole thing to my mind is that it is all so evidently artificial—­so palpably pumped up.  Clapping his hand on his breast, lifting his shaky fingers to Heaven, Mr. Russell is always in a frenzied protestation of honesty, of rugged and unassailable virtue, of bitter vaticination against the wickedness of the rest of mankind.  No man could be as honest as he professes to be, and live.  The whole thing would be exquisite acting if, underneath all this conscious exaggeration, you did not see the mere political bravo.  You turn sometimes, and sicken as though you were at the country fair, and saw the poor raucous-throated charlatan eating fire or swallowing swords to the hideous accompaniments of the big drum and the deafening cymbal.

[Sidenote:  Mr. Carson.]

No—­Mr. T.W.  Russell is the mere play-actor.  If you want one of the real actualities in the more sinister side of Irish life, look at and study Mr. Carson.  It is he who winds up the debate on the commission of Mr. Justice Mathew—­a debate made memorable by the ablest debating speech Mr. Morley has made in the whole course of his Parliamentary career.  I see men talking to Mr. Carson that belong to an opposite side of politics.  I confess that I never see him pass without an internal shudder.  Just as the sight of an abbe gave M. Homais, in “Madame