It was, of course, in the Leeds election that I felt the deepest personal interest; but the _Mercury_ had to take note of all the elections in Yorkshire, and some of these were of special interest. At Sheffield a candidate came forward in the extreme Radical interest whose speeches attracted some notice in Yorkshire, though they passed unobserved by the larger public beyond. This was Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who now made his first attempt to win Parliamentary honours. Up to that moment I had only known Mr. Chamberlain as a young Birmingham politician who was fond of saying things both bitter and flippant, not only about his political opponents, but about the older members of his own party. He had made himself one of the buglemen in the cry raised against Mr. Forster, towards whom he seemed to entertain a feeling of almost personal antipathy. At Sheffield he made himself conspicuous by his sneers at Mr. Gladstone and almost all the recognised leaders of Liberalism. His own political opinions appeared to be based upon a crude and intolerant Radicalism of the Socialistic type. He evidently believed that promises of material benefits would enable him to win the support of the mass of the electors, and he conceived also that the best method of displacing his seniors in the party of which he was a member was to assail them with a rather coarse invective. These methods did not commend themselves to the electors of Sheffield, and Mr. Chamberlain was soundly beaten. But he had great ability, accompanied by great force of character, and all the world knows how his ability and forcefulness have since carried him to one of the highest places in political life. It is, however, not as a Radical, but as a militant Tory that he now figures before the world. I should not have dwelt upon the Sheffield election of 1874 but for the fact that it was this election which made me one of Mr. Chamberlain's political opponents. I did not like the way in which he spoke of men who had been serving the country before he himself was born; and, without questioning his honesty, I came to the conclusion that personal ambition played a large part in his political professions. It followed that from 1874 onwards the _Leeds Mercury_ was never friendly to Mr. Chamberlain, and never gave him its confidence, even at a time when he was the idol of English Radicalism. For years I had to suffer because of this attitude towards the Birmingham politician; and many a time, when I have been sitting on the platform at a political meeting in Leeds, some speaker has inveighed fiercely against me because of my want of faith in Mr. Chamberlain. I had my revenge in 1885, when the Leeds Liberals swung round to my view of that gentleman, and I was hailed--quite undeservedly--as a prophet because I had always distrusted one whom they now not only distrusted, but disliked and despised.