A great demonstration was made at Glasgow on Saturday in
favour of the Franchise Bill. No less than 70,000 persons joined in a procession of the trades ; eight open-air meetings were held, at which resolutions supporting the Government were passed enthusiastically ; and three meetings under cover were held in the three largest halls. Mr. Trevelyan addressed one of these, in St. Andrew's Hall, in a speech in which, after expressing his profound confidence in the ultimate result, he called on his audience to consider the feelings of the Commons, who, after five months of weary labour, had completed the Fran- chise Bill, and sent it up to the Lords only to find it rejected by a crowd of Peers who take no part in debate, but attend to vote for a prearranged rejection. Lord Salisbury, Mr. Trevelyan said, had not only rejected it, but derided the claim of two millions who asked to be admitted to the Franchise, and of those vast multitudes who tried to show that they approved their claim. The politicians are so out of the habit of regarding the rural householder as a citizen, that they are unable to speak of him with propriety,—Sir S. Northeote, for instance, talking of turning two millions of voters " loose " on the country, as if they were wild beasts. Mr. Trevelyan ridiculed Lord Salisbury's anxiety for minorities, pointing out that the Tories who rule the election of Scotch and Irish Representative Peers never, except through a mistake, allow a Liberal to sit. He denied that the new franchise could lessen the influence of the agricultural interest, for the 800,000 labourers to be enfranchised were the agricul- tural interest themselves. What would suffer was the system of allowing a few families to choose the county Members. Mr. Trevelyan addressed no menace to the House of Lords, but he said,—" When it comes to two hundred individuals, who are some- thing more than citizens, saying that two millions of their fellow. countrymen shall not be citizens at all, a way out must be found, and it is the interest of the House of Lords that it should be found quickly."
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