This day week, Sir George Trevelyan made two speeches at
Carnarvon. In the first of these, he called the Liberal Unionists' objection to Home-rule "the miserable excuse of a difference of opinion about a Bill introduced eighteen months ago," as if a deep-seated conviction that Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy is ruinous to the Empire ought to expire in eighteen months by mere lapse of time. In the second speech, he reiterated that the Liberal Unionists bad broken off from the Liberal Party on "a sham and a pretext," and described the clauses of the Crimes Act under which dangerous Associations may be put down, as one which "throws political opponents into prison on the cowardly and miserable ground that they belong to political Associations which the Lord-Lieutenant for the time being thinks unlawful." He then went on to describe Liberals as those who set about reforming what they regard as needing reform, and the Tory Party as resting on the four pillars of the liquor interest, the plural vote, an unreformed House of Lords, and the Established Church. The Liberal Unionists, be said, needed no courage to support Lord Salisbury, for they had the support of their own class in doing so. Those who needed courage and displayed it, were himself and his colleagues, who defy the opinion of the class to which they belong, in order to obtain their rights for the masses of the people. Sir George, after thus arrogating all the virtue and courage to the aide of the statesmen who proclaim everywhere that they have the masses of the people behind them, went on to declare that this Parlia- ment is as far as possible from being one elected on a democratic basis, on the ground that the Act of 1885 is so discreditably favourable to the richer classes. Why, then, did he not shake off the dust from his feet in 1885, and, after quitting the Govern- ment, denounce the half-and-half policy which he now holds up to reprobation ?
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