He was justified in the confidence which he reposed in them. One attempt was made to raise the personal issue against him; and its result showed that any man would be imprudent who sought to oppose Sir Charles Dilke in the Forest of Dean except on strictly political grounds. First and last no member of Parliament ever got more loyal support; but no man ever trusted less to personal popularity. He carefully developed the whole electoral machinery. The month which he spent every autumn in the Forest was very largely a month of work on the detail of registration, and the register as he caused it to be kept might be put forward as an example of perfection unapproached elsewhere in Great Britain. 'A day or two afterwards I received at a public meeting at Chelsea Town Hall an address signed by 11,000 inhabitants of Chelsea, congratulating me on my return to public life. It was signed by persons on both sides of politics. In reply, I made another good speech; but it was a great occasion.' Among the letters which reached him from all quarters was one from Sir Henry Parkes, who wrote: 'Chief Secretary, New South Wales, 'Sydney, _March 9th_, 1891. 'I still hold the belief that few men have before them a broader path of honourable usefulness than you. May you succeed in nobly serving the dear old country!' He received now and henceforward many invitations to address labouring men, especially from the miners of Great Britain. At Cannock Chase, in August, 1890, he attended his first miners' meeting. How rapidly the list increased may be judged by the fact that, speaking in July, 1891, at Ilkeston, he alluded to his conferences with miners of Yorkshire, of Lancashire, of Cheshire, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire, Staffordshire, and the Swansea and Neath districts in England and Wales, and of Fife and Ayrshire in Scotland. Attempts had not been wanting to stimulate against him the strong puritanism of these people, especially in South Wales; the answer had come from men like Tom Ellis, [Footnote: Mr. Thomas E. Ellis was a Liberal Whip at this time.] who brought him to address the quarrymen of Blaenau Festiniog, or like Mabon--William Abraham--miner, bard, and orator, who organized a gigantic torchlight procession of his own constituents in the Rhondda Valley to welcome Sir Charles and Lady Dilke, and who, at Lydney, when Sir Charles finally accepted their invitation, congratulated the Forest of Dean on having secured the services of 'one who was not only a political leader, but a real Labour leader.'