He unsuccessfully contested
Preston in 1885 as a
Liberal. However, he opposed
William Ewart Gladstone's
Home Rule policy and was elected to the
House of Commons of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as a
Liberal Unionist in 1886 for
South Tyrone. He served between 1895 and 1900 as
Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board in the
Unionist administration at the Dublin "
Land Conference" which resulted in the passing of the
Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903. This defused the Protestant tenant farmers' revolt. Russell continued to represent Tyrone South in Parliament. In
1906, supported by
Lindsay Crawford and his
Independent Orange Order while at the same acknowledging his debt to Catholic tenant farmers, he was re-elected as an "Independent Unionist", one of several candidates referred to as "
Russellite Unionist". Russell was vice-president of the
Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland (DATI), Russell does not appear to have contested the
December 1910 general election, but in 1911 he won
a by-election in
Tyrone North, a seat he held until the constituency was abolished in 1918. He retired from politics in 1918 and died in Dublin on 2 May 1920, aged 79, when the baronetcy became extinct. ==Arms==