Indeed, it may be said that with this election of Lord Hartington to the Liberal leadership the reign of the caucus commenced. The dejected Liberals were resolved, if possible, to organise victory, and at Birmingham men were found who were not only prepared to assist them in the task, but who were quite ready to assume the lead of the Liberal forces throughout the country. All the talk that one heard in political circles in those days was of caucuses on the Birmingham plan, and of the rise of the National Liberal Federation, the existence of which people were just dimly beginning to recognise. I am not writing the history of the National Liberal Federation, and I pretend to no special knowledge on the subject of its origin. Popular opinion credits Mr. Schnadhorst, the famous organiser, of Birmingham, and subsequently of London, with the authorship of the scheme. But I doubt the truth of this. I knew Mr. Schnadhorst well, and had a great respect for him as a man at once honest, sagacious, and of much simplicity of character. But he was not intellectually great, nor was he the astute and unscrupulous Machiavelli his opponents believed him to be. The Birmingham caucus, which became a model for all other Liberal constituencies, was probably founded by the joint efforts of several men, among whom Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Powell Williams, as well as Mr. Schnadhorst, were to be counted. The plan of the caucus was delightfully simple. A constituency--and those were the days of big constituencies--was divided into districts, and the Liberals of each district were allotted a certain number of seats on the Central Liberal Association. This Association generally consisted of so many hundreds of persons, and it thus came to pass that the Association became known as the Huddersfield Two Hundred, the Leeds Four Hundred, the Birmingham Six Hundred, and so on. On a given day in each constituency, the Liberal electors in the various districts met, and elected their representatives on the Central Association. Every known Liberal had a vote, so that the constitution of the central body was, in theory at all events, delightfully democratic. These associations were designed to sweep away the old system of Liberal committees, influenced by local magnates, which had prevailed ever since the passing of the Reform Bill. There was a strong belief among the inventors of the caucus that by means of this plan they would secure the predominance of the advanced Radical party. The old privileges of wealth and rank were henceforth to count for nothing in the councils of Liberalism. Every man was to have a vote, not merely for a member of Parliament, but for the local body which was to select candidates, manage local political affairs, and generally determine the character of the Liberalism professed by the constituency. Every year the different Hundreds were to elect representatives who were to act as their delegates at the conferences of the National Liberal