My championship of Forster and his educational policy, though it had the warm support of Sir Edward Baines and of the majority of Yorkshire Liberals, brought upon me the heavy displeasure of the advanced Radicals. Like Mr. Forster, I was regarded as a traitor to my principles, and again and again in those days, when I attended public meetings, I heard the _Leeds Mercury_ and its editor denounced by those who declared that the Liberalism propounded in its columns was a feeble, milk-and-water product, scarcely better than open and undiluted Toryism. Here I must pause to interject one word of grateful acknowledgment of the generous manner in which the proprietors of the _Mercury_ stood by me in those stormy days, and encouraged me to give free expression to the independent opinions that I had formed. It was a time of trial for Liberalism in general, and it was also a time of trial for the young editor who, in supporting what he believed to be the truth, had thus to run counter to the convictions of a very important section of his readers. Yet, looking back, I cannot say that I suffered any substantial injury from the ordeal through which I had thus to pass. It is true that for many years I was regarded with suspicion as being only a half-hearted Liberal by a considerable section of my party in Yorkshire; but I had the compensation of being allowed to speak my own mind, and of knowing that my words were not without influence upon others. No greater compensation than this can be desired by any publicist. It was not the education question alone that engaged the attention of the public in the years 1872 and 1873, with which I am now dealing. The great problem of the liquor traffic had been brought to the front, in a large measure owing to the spirited but somewhat mischievous campaign maintained at a great cost by the United Kingdom Alliance, in favour of the measure known as the Permissive Bill. I have never been able to understand why the promoters of the Permissive Bill should have made a fetich of that very dubious measure. Yet for a whole generation it has been their shibboleth, and, no matter what might be the aims or the virtues of the man who refused to pronounce it, the supporters of the Permissive Bill have regarded him as an enemy. They, at least, have not laid themselves open to the charge of trimming. For more than thirty years the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, has been their cry; and as a consequence they have seen these years pass without the carrying of any real amendment of our licensing system.