BARON (1832-1900), lord chief justice of England, was born at Newry, county Down, on Nov. so, 1832, the son of Arthur Rus sell. The family was Roman Catholic. Educated first at Belfast, afterwards in Newry, and finally at St. Vincent's College, Castle knock, Dublin, in 1849, he was articled to a firm of solicitors in Newry. In 1854 he was admitted, and began to practise his profession. In the legal proceedings arising out of Catholic and Orange disturbances young Russell distinguished himself in the cause of his co-religionists. After practising for two years, he determined to seek a wider field for his abilities. He went to London in 1856, and entered Lincoln's Inn. In 1858 he married Ellen, daughter of Dr. Mulhulland of Belfast, and in 1859 he was called to the bar, and joined the Northern Circuit. He had to rely upon himself. But the equipment was sufficient. A well built frame ; a strong, striking face, with broad forehead, keen grey eyes, and a full and sensitive mouth ; a voice which, though not musical, was rich, and responded well to strong emotions, whether of indignation, or scorn, or pity; an amazing power of concentrating thought ; an intellectual grasp, promptly seizing the real points of the most entangled case. and rejecting all that was secondary, or petty, or irrelevant; a faculty of lucid and forcible expression, which, without literary ornateness or grace of style, could on fit occasions rise to impassioned eloquence— all these things Russell had. But beyond and above all these was his immense personality, an embodiment of energetic will which riveted attention, dominated his audience, and bore down opposition. In his early years Russell's practice was mostly at the Passage Court at Liverpool, and he published a book on its procedure in 1862.
In 1872 Russell "took silk," and from that date for some time he divided the best leading work of the circuit with Holker, Her schell and Pope. Holker became solicitor general in 1874, Her schell in 188o, and about that time Pope left the circuit. Russell's success as a Q.C. during this period of his career was prodigious. He excelled in the conduct alike of commercial cases and of those involving, as he used to say, "a human interest," although undoubtedly it was the latter which more attracted him. He was seen to the least advantage in cases which involved technical or scientific detail. If his advocacy suffered a defeat, however, it was never an inglorious defeat. Those who were on the Northern Circuit at the time could not easily forget the case of Dixon v. Plimsoll—a libel action brought by a Liverpool shipowner against Plimsoll—in which Holker won a notable victory for the defend ant; or Nuttall v. Wilde, a breach of promise action, in which Pope led brilliantly for the successful plaintiff, and Russell's speech for the defence was one of the finest in point of passion and pathos that was ever heard upon the Northern Circuit.
In 1880 Russell was returned to parliament as independent Liberal member for Dundalk. From that time forward until 1894, he sat in the House of Commons : for Dundalk until 1885, and afterwards for South Hackney. During the whole of this epoch, in home affairs, Irish business almost monopolized the political stage; and Russell was Irish to the core. From 188o to 1886, as a private member, and as the attorney-general in Gladstone's ad ministrations of 1886 and 1892, he worked in and out of parlia ment for the Liberal policy in regard to the treatment of Ireland as few men except Russell could or would work. His position throughout was clear and consistent. Before 1886 on several occasions he supported the action of the Irish Nationalist party. He opposed coercion, voted for compensation for disturbance, advocated the release of political prisoners and voted for the Maamtrasna inquiry. But he never became a member of the Irish Home Rule or of the Parnellite party; he was elected at Dundalk as an independent Liberal, and such he remained. When,
as attorney-general in the Gladstone administration, he warmly advocated the establishment of a subordinate parliament in Ire land, he did so because he sought the amelioration and not the destruction of Ireland's relations with the rest of the kingdom. Russell rapidly became in London what he was already in Lan cashire, a favourite leader in nisi Arius actions. The list of causes celebres in the period 188o-94 is really a record of Russell's cases, and, for a great part, of Russell's victories. The best known of the exceptions was the libel action Belt v. Lawes in 1882, which, after a trial lasting more than 4o days, resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff, for whom Sir Hardinge Giffard (after wards Lord Chancellor Halsbury) appeared as leading counsel. The triumph of his client in the Colin Campbell divorce suit in 1886 afforded perhaps the most brilliant instance of Russell's forensic capacity in private litigation. More important, however, as well as more famous, than any of his successes in the ordinary courts of law during this period were his performances as an advocate in two public transactions of mark in British history. The first of these in point of date was the Parnell Commission of 1888-9o, in which Sir Charles Russell appeared as leading counsel for Parnell. In April 1889, after 63 sittings of the commission, in the course of which 34o witnesses had been examined, Sir Charles Russell, who had already destroyed the chief personal charge against Parnell by a brilliant cross-examination, in which he proved it to have been based upon a forgery, made his great open ing speech for the defence. It lasted several days, and concluded on April 12. This speech, besides its merit as a wonderful piece of advocacy, possesses permanent value as an historical survey of the Irish question during the last century, from the point of view of an Irish Liberal. The second was the Bering Sea Arbi tration, held in Paris in 1893. Russell, then attorney-general, with Sir Richard Webster (afterwards Lord Alverstone, L.C.J.), was the leading counsel for Great Britain. Russell maintained the proposition, which he again handled in his Saratoga address to the American Bar Association in 1896, that "international law is neither more nor less than what civilized nations have agreed shall be binding on one another as international law." The award was, substantially, in favour of Great Britain.
In 1894, on the death of Lord Bowen, Russell accepted the position of a lord of appeal. A month later he was appointed lord chief justice of England in succession to Lord Coleridge. Brief as was his tenure of the office, he proved himself well worthy of it. He was dignified without pompousness, quick without being irritable, and masterful without tyranny. In 1896 Lord Russell (Pollock and Hawkins being on this occasion his col leagues on the bench) presided at the trial at bar of the leaders of the Jameson Raid. Russell's conduct of this trial, in the midst of much popular excitement, was by itself sufficient to establish his reputation as a great judge. One other event at least in his career while lord chief justice deserves a record, namely, his share in the Venezuela Arbitration in 1899. Lord Herschell, a British representative on the Commission, died somewhat suddenly in America before the beginning of the proceedings, and Russell took his place.
Russell contributed to the reform of the law by his advocacy of improvement in the system of legal education, and in pro moting measures against corruption and secret commissions, though the bills he introduced did not become law. He died on Aug. Io, 1900. Few English lawyers have ever excited the ad miration abroad that Lord Russell did, both on the Continent of Europe and in America.
See R. B. O'Brien, Life of Lord Russell of Killowen (1909).