I do not think I exaggerate when I say that it was only in the columns of the _Leeds Mercury_ that he was consistently and steadily defended. It was a labour of love on my part thus to stand by a man for whom I entertained so great and affectionate an admiration, and who was, as I conceived, being so cruelly ill-treated by those of the same political household as himself. It was said at the time that Forster inspired the _Leeds Mercury_, and that the articles defending him which I published were really written by himself. In the interests of honourable journalism, and of Mr. Forster's reputation, I must state the actual facts. I was, as I have already said, on terms of personal friendship with him, and I was in the fullest sympathy with his Irish policy; but from the moment when he became Chief Secretary until he retired from that office, Forster held no communication with me, either direct or indirect. I never saw him, and he never wrote to me, nor did I address a single word to him. This was characteristic of Forster's high sense of public duty. He was too proud and too high-spirited to try to enlist any man's sympathies, or to secure any newspaper advocacy. Men spoke of him as a clever wire-puller who could manufacture a spurious public sentiment in his own favour. How little they knew him! If he had chosen to resort to those arts with which his assailants were so familiar he might have won the support of many tongues and pens. He preferred, then as always in his public career, to devote himself with a single-minded purpose to the performance of his duty, leaving the consequences to take care of themselves. It was in this way that it came to pass that his only defender in the Press in those dark and troublous days was a little-known journalist in Yorkshire.