Sir George Trevelyan became very eloquent at St. Austell on
Wednesday, on the subject of the Registration Bill, which it would be, he said, the first duty of Mr. Gladstone's Govern- ment to pass the moment it came into power, and which would enfranchise some half-million of working men who are now never placed on the register. We have no sort of objection to having a register properly framed without throwing on the voter the duty of making his claim. But we have no sort of belief that the preparation of such a register would seriously alter the balance of parties, much less introduce what Sir George Trevelyan magniloquently anticipates as "a new heaven and a new earth." As a rule, the working man who cares so little about his vote as not to take the trouble to claim it now, will hardly take the trouble to use it then ; and if he uses it, is just as likely to use it for one side as for the other. Sir George Trevelyan's anticipation, that "when once the electoral system had been altered in the direction of justice and absolute equality, they might look for a long equable flow of righteous and wise legislation which might change the face of the country," is wildly unreasonable. Party spirit will not disappear for the addition of half-a-million of men, precisely resembling the three millions or so already there, to the register.
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