On Tuesday, Mr. Trevelyan brought forward his motion for the
extension of household suffrage to the counties, in an ex- ceedingly vigorous and amusing speech, in which he attacked, first, Mr. Lowe's extraordinary advice to wait for agitation before conceding this claim, and then analysed the ample evid- ence of the rapid growth of public opinion in its favour. Next he exposed the creation of faggot-votes in counties for party pur- poses, in a very lively analysis of the new faggot-votes created in Midlothian to resist Mr. Gladstone, and declared that house- hold suffrage in the counties is the only cure for this sys- tematic mockery of the Constitution, since it is the only thing which could render this laborious process completely futile in result. At present, he said, a county election in England is one of the most remarkable of political operations. Nobody has anything to say to the mass of the inhabitants of the county. The most effective election speeches are such as would be addressed on market-day to the farmers at a two-shilling ordinary in a county town. Mr. C. S. Read, for instance, in his recent very successful campaign in North Norfolk, had referred to only one subject of popular interest to the true people of the county, and that was in the shape of a vehement con- demnation of the Act providing for the education of the children of agricultural labourers. Thus the people of the county are nothing in a county election. No one thinks of them at all, although the farmers are courted so much. The very families which provide all the recruits for our wars, have no voice at all in deciding the issues of peace or war.
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