Sir Charles Russell has occupied three days of the Special
Commission,—Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday,—in a very eloquent speech, not yet concluded, which is directed to show that there was the greatest need for the Land League organisation ; that the popular feeling against tenants who were willing to take farms from which their predecessors had been evicted, who have been nicknamed " landgrabbers," is of very old date ; that the Land League diminished rather than in- creased the number of outrages, by protecting the people against unjust eviction ; and that the leaders had done so much in the way of warning against outrage,—boycotting, of course, not counting as outrage, and, according to Sir Charles Russell, tending to diminish serious outrage,—that they could not be reasonably condemned, as the Attorney-General had condemned them, for winking at outrage in general, still less for de- liberately stimulating to it in particular cases. Sir Charles Russell asked on Thursday for an adjournment till Tuesday, instead of continuing his speech yesterday. It has certainly been a very able and eloquent, though of course an ex parte, state- ment of the case for the Parnellites. There is a rumour that during one of Sir Charles Russell's pathetic expositions of Irish misery, Mr. Parnell was observed to be shedding tears.
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