For the rest, Sir George Trevelyan's speech was distinguished by
what Mr. Matthew Arnold has called his tendency to make " a religion of the Liberal Party,"—a religion which he frankly avowed and defended. He made a religion of it, he said, because the Liberal Party is a party of reform, and reform was never more needed than now ;" and in the next place, because the Liberal Party had prevented politics from becoming a war of classes by giving the poorer classes allies and leaders among the educated and the rich. Both reasons are excellent for the .advocacy of reform and for resistance to anything like class- government ; but when Sir George Trevelyan says that reform was "never more needed than now," is he not unjust to the con- sequences of the reform which is more especially identified with himself, the introduction of household suffrage into all our -constituencies ? If that has not resulted in making even Con- servative Members more favourable to reform than they were, household suffrage is a failure. And if it has so resulted, then -it is not true that the Liberals are so exclusively " the party of reform" as they once were, or that their services as a distinct party are quite so indispensable and separate.
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