5 OCTOBER 1867, Page 2

Sir J. Trollop% the Member for South Lincolnshire, has been

assisting at the annual dinner of the Lincolnshire Constitutional Registration Society, and doing the Tory speechmaking for that auspicious occasion. He recommended the appointment of the Marquis of Exeter to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Lincolnshire, vacant by the death of Lord Aveland, and gave the noble Marquis an excellent character for the situation. After publishing his little testimonial to the Marquis of Exeter's blandness of manner, he applied himself to the more important business of testi- monializing Conservatives and Conservatism. "Conservatism was really and truly the principle of every thinking man in Her Majesty's dominions. If it were not so, the position of every man in the country would be reversed. The workmen would become masters, and their present employers would be their slaves." That is a very startling announcement, indeed, of Sir John Trollope's. We could understand his saying that if every man were not Conservative, then everybody would be somebody elae,—for it does involve a certain amount of (involun- tary, but scarcely party) Conservatism to be yourself, and not somebody else. But why the loss of Conservatism should make

working-men into masters and masters into slaves especially, in- stead of creating a general flux of relations, we find it somewhat hard to sae. The truth is, Sir J. Tkollope is one of Mr. Carlyle's " deep-bellied " country gentlemen, who, BO long as he brings out big, rolling phrases on the side of his own party, does not particu- larly mind, beyond that, what the phrases mean.