Colston Day was celebrated on Monday by the Gladstonians and
Conservatives at Bristol, Sir G. Trevelyan being the principal speaker on behalf of the Gladstonians, in the Anchor Society, and Lord Ashbourne, with Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, representing the Unionists in the Dolphin Society. (Why, by-the-way, is an Anchor chosen as repre- senting progress, which it is usually intended to arrest, and the Dolphin as representing rest, when its function, in mythology at least, is that of dragging, and dragging swiftly, the marine car of divinities of the deep ?) Sir George Trevelyan was determined to be hopeful. He spoke appa- rently in high spirits of the great achievements which he was sanguine enough to expect from the Government. With regard to Ireland, he expected the Government to find the financial means for settling the troubles between the evicted tenants and the landlords, and rescuing those who had refused to pay rents, whether they could have paid them or not, from the ruin they had brought upon themselves. This he euphuistically termed, "not treating Irish tenants in a vindictive spirit." Is it, then, " vindictive " to let people take the moral and legal consequences of deliberate breaches of the law ? He defended Sir James Mathew, not only for what he had a right to do, but for what he had no right to do, namely, attacking one of the landlords on whose conduct he had to report without taking a tittle of evidence, and publishing to the world ex parte statements,—often hearsay statements,— without even waiting for the replies of the persons assailed. To our minds, Sir George Trevelyan's sanguine expectations from the Government are about as unwarrantable as any hope could be which has suffered a fatal blight in almost the very moment of its birth.
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