Sir George Trevelyan made a speech at Downend, near Bristol,
this day week, in which he stated that the Unionists were going in "shoals," wherever there was an election in Ireland, to vote for the Parnellite candidate. We hope this is not true, and it is at least quite untrue that the English Unionists as a party give any support to Mr. Parnell. We have always steadily maintained, and always shall continue to maintain, that the McCarthyite opponents of Mr. Parnell are clearly to be preferred to his followers, and that Unionists ought to be ashamed to support the most unscrupulous of all the Home-rulers, merely in the hope that he will bring ruin on his cause. One might as well pay tribute to the worst of our country's foes in the confidence that his designs would, if carried into effect, defeat themselves. Sir George, in sup- porting Home-rule, declared that Irish laws are made without any reference whatever to Irish wishes. If so, how does it happen that all the principal Irish measures of this Session, for instance, have received the cordial support of the Home- rule Members ? There has been no section of the House of Corn - mons which has had more influence over the Irish measures of this Government, the Crimes Act of 1887 being the only exception, than the Irish section. Sir George Trevelyan then went on to pour forth the ardent passion of his soul for more reform, which, however, as we have elsewhere pointed out, was limited to petty reforms which he thought likely to swell the Gladstonian Party in the constituencies, and carefully eschewed any mention of those more drastic democratic reforms which would play into the hands of the great Conservative constituencies at the cost of Irish Home-rulers and Welsh Disestablishers. Sir George Trevelyan's democratic aspira- tions are confined to steps from which he thinks his party likely to suck no small advantage.
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