Mr. Trevelyan brought on his resolutions in favour of house-
hold suffrage in the counties yesterday week, in a vigorous speech in which he declared himself quite in favour of disfranchising all voters so illiterate as to be unable to read and mark their own ballot-paper,—an arrangement which was defeated in 1870, not by the Liberal party, but the Conservatives, who were the chief friends of the illiterate voters, though Mr. Plunkett (the Con- servative Member for West Gloucestershire) now wished to insist on some educational qualification. In answer to Mr. Lowe's paper in the Fortnightly, Mr. Trevelyan denied all intention of making household suffrage a stepping-stone to universal suffrage. He in- sisted on the very impressive and touching manner in which the agricultural labourers had claimed for themselves the vote ; and answered the charge that great corruption had resulted from the wide suffrage in the United States, by pointing out that similar corruption was common enough formerly in this country under a very narrow suffrage indeed, and that it was cured not by narrowing the suffrage still further, but by the Civil Service reform which was due to the action of Parliament when impelled by a much more popular suffrage.
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