You can never know what a comfort it was to me at that time to know that I had one staunch friend in the Press, and that the dear old _Leeds Mercury_ would always judge me fairly and try to make the public see the truth. God bless you!" I do not know whether he or I was the more deeply moved by this sudden and most unexpected outburst of feeling from a man who, as a rule, stubbornly concealed the sensitiveness of his nature and the warmth of his heart under a rugged and at times almost forbidding exterior. I do not pretend to have deserved what he said, but the words he uttered sank into my heart, never to be forgotten. Henceforth the censures of a caucus and the sneers of those superior critics who derided me as the victim of an absurd prejudice in favour of a statesman who had fallen, were as less than nothing to me. CHAPTER XV. THE FIRST LIBERAL IMPERIALIST. Forster a Pioneer of Liberal Imperialism--His Political Courage--His Unfortunate Manner--His Home Life--Intrigues in the Cabinet--The Plots against Forster's Life--Reaction in his Favour--Forster and Lord Hartington--The Former's Grief for Gordon--Forster and Lord Rosebery--Mr. Stead and the _Pall Mall Gazette_--His Responsibility for the Gordon Imbroglio. I should like to dwell upon my visits to Forster at his own home at Wharfeside, and to describe the frank, wholesome talk which I had there on many different occasions with the master of the house; but the talk was private, I made no notes of it at the time, and it is better that I should make no attempt to recall it now. This, however, I will say, in justice to Forster himself. During all my intercourse with him I never heard him utter a harsh word or give expression to an unworthy sentiment. No public man of his day was more cruelly misunderstood by his contemporaries. It had become a sort of tradition among the followers of Mr. Chamberlain, and among others who ought to have known better, that Forster was not even a genuine Liberal. He was supposed to be a trimmer and a time-server, and all manner of ignoble jealousies were attributed to him. I know, not only from many repeated conversations with him, but from acts of his which never reached the public, how deep and genuine was his faith in Liberal principles, how exalted and far-extended his belief in the application and development of those principles. He was the first man of eminence to attempt to bring home to the mind of the nation the greatness of its Imperial duties and responsibilities. It was he who, in the days when he was a discarded Minister, sowed the seed which is now bringing forth fruit in the shape of that unity of the Empire for which others, who came but yesterday into the field, are, with a great flourish of trumpets, claiming the credit.