Deeply and intelligently interested as he was in the future development of Cardiff, which he was to do so much to promote, Bute's conviction was that a really healthy public opinion in the district {85} could not be created or maintained if only one school of politicians was to have the chance of making its voice heard. This was the main reason which determined him, with full foreknowledge of the heavy financial burden it would entail on him, of starting and supporting a Conservative daily paper in the heart of Liberal Wales. The local Liberals were, of course, disappointed and indignant; and the "Leap of the wolf into the fold," as they described the new journalistic venture, was very bitterly commented on both in the _Cardiff Times_ and in its successor, the _South Wales Daily News_. The "underhand influence of the Castle," the "Castle propaganda," the "pouring out of gold from the Castle coffers," were the constant theme of discussion in the opposition press, whose acrimony was not diminished by the steadily growing power and influence of the Conservative organ. Yet although Bute was for some years the actual owner of the _Western Mail_, not the slightest trace of his personal influence is to be found in its columns during those early years, nor the least suggestion that he made use of the paper to serve any private ends of his own. "Not a single line that has ever appeared in the _Western Mail_ has been written or inspired by the Marquis of Bute," wrote the Editor when his paper had reached a position of security and success; and the statement was literally and exactly true. The _Western Mail_ won the confidence of the people by strongly upholding their rights at such times of crisis as the serious upheaval in the coal and iron industries in 1873; and one of its most appreciated tributes was that received from a leading Nonconformist minister: "Though you are Conservative in name you are Liberal in practice." After eight {86} years' connection with the paper Bute relinquished all financial interest in it in 1877. He considered himself that this journalistic enterprise had cost him from first to last not less than £50,000. "I have never grudged it," he once simply said when questioned on the subject. With these new interests at home, Bute did not lose sight of his intention (expressed in a letter quoted in the last chapter) of spending the winter of 1869 and the succeeding spring in Rome, and he arrived there in the last days of November, taking up his residence at the Palazzo Savielli in the Piazza SS. Apostoli. He wrote shortly before Christmas: