Certainly it was scarcely to be expected that his claims to the seat should pass unchallenged. He was still (1888) only twenty-five years old. He was appealing to his own countryside; and a prophet is recorded to have authority anywhere but there. There was the inevitable question of envious neighbors—“Is not this the bootmaker’s boy?” There was the man who had known “David” with the curls down his back—who had kept a record of his youthful pranks. Then there was “the County”—that fine essence of squiredom which had always regarded “the seat” as one of its own possessions. Above all, there were the little borough circles—the elders in the chapels, the grey-beards in the seats of the saints. There were some such seniors who shook their heads gravely at such madness. The boy must bide his time. Who was he to rule over them? For when David, the shepherd’s youngest son, came up to face the Philistine champion, it was not only the Philistine enemy, but also his own elder brothers who scoffed and doubted. Against all these doubts and envies only one thing could prevail. It was the new wave of Nationalism which was sweeping over the younger generation throughout Wales, and especially North Wales. Wales was tired of those respectable professional members who were so easily captured by the political machines at Westminster. They wanted some one endowed with the courage to revolt; and already they had a perception that David Lloyd George was such a man. He had shown this in his defence of the fishermen of Nantlle, and in his championship of that poor old quarryman of Llanfrothen. In both cases he had defied authority; and in both cases he had won. He had been the first to break the tradition of fear which brooded over the Welsh people. He had already roused a new spirit of hope in the younger generation: and they were determined that he should carry their banner forward. At first his candidature progressed very slowly. It was true that the constituency had fared badly of recent years. In 1886, when Tom Ellis was sweeping all before him in Merionethshire, the Carnarvon Boroughs had put forward an old-fashioned Liberal who had lost the seat to an able Tory. At this time it was still in the possession of that Tory member—Mr. Swetenham, Q.C. Humdrum Liberalism, as David Lloyd George had already prophesied, had not proved a winning card in the Boroughs. But such an experience does not always remove prejudice. There were those who argued that a Q.C. could only be defeated by another Q.C.—or say, a professor; or perhaps, even better, a millionaire, if he could be obtained. We all know these dreams that haunt the minds of local committee-men in difficult and doubtful constituencies.