15 NOVEMBER 1873, Page 3

Mr. G. 0. Trevelyan has also made a capital speech

at Sheffield this week,--a speech shrewd, humorous, and racy. He compli- mented Sheffield (very justly) on the character of its represen- tatives, remarking that " when a cause is in the ascendant, men will vote for anything on two legs that can repeat the shibboleth of the party." " At this moment," he said, " the Conservatives in half the boroughs of England would poll, to a man, for a tailor's dummy, if it could take off its hat, pay its election bills, promise to keep the Bible in our schools, and extend the hours of opening our public- houses. But when a party is no.longer at the top of the tide, its success must depend to a very great extent on the personal qualities of its representatives." Mr. Trevelyan made a very spirited attack on Lord Salisbury's aspirations for a " tooth- less" Liberal Ministry, pointing out what delightful distrust of his own party Lord Salisbury's evident leaning to that solution betrays, and laughing at the perils with which property is threat- ened by a party " which contains three Rothschilds, and a Ministry which has enlisted a couple of Cavendishes." Mr. Trevelyan is one of the few politicians of overflowing humour among the rising generation, and it really is a quality as useful in politics as it is becoming rare. It is indeed impossible to expound adequately the extreme feebleness of the party of panic without it.