[32] The _Carnarvon Herald_ records that the Tories polled every possible man. One voter was brought all the way from Wolverhampton. Three Carnarvon plasterers were brought by car to Carnarvon from the beach at Pwllheli, where they were working. [33] The full figures were: David Lloyd George 1,963 Ellis Nanney 1,945 —— Majority 18 —— [Illustration: MRS. WILLIAM GEORGE, THE MOTHER OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE.] [Illustration: DAVID LLOYD GEORGE AT THE AGE OF SIXTEEN] CHAPTER VII FIRST SKIRMISHES “And now, Out of that land where Snowdon night by night Receives the confidences of lonely stars, And where Carnarvon’s ruthless battlements Magnificently oppress the daunted tide, There comes, no fabled Merlin, son of mist, And brother to the twilight, but a man.” _William Watson on Mr. Lloyd George._ ENTERING the House of Commons in April 1890, David Lloyd George walked straight into one of those great party struggles which in those days supplied the British public with an efficient substitute for the Prize Ring. The subject was a clause in the Budget of 1890 compensating the Drink Trade for abolished licences. The whole Liberal Party attacked this clause hotly under the leadership of Mr. Gladstone. The whole Unionist Party supported it. On the face of it, the young Lloyd George, hot with temperance enthusiasm, could not have found a more congenial theme. But his letters and diaries reveal that he felt an immediate chill on contact with the House of Commons. He found the drink question being used as a great party weapon on both sides. Shrewd political calculations had annexed one party to drink and another party to temperance. But the young Lloyd George, drunk with the temperance faith, detected no real enthusiasm on either side. “The debate,” he wrote to his uncle on May 16th, “was rather an unreal one, no fervour or earnestness characterising it. The House does not seem at all to realise or to be impressed with the gigantic evils of drunkenness.” It was characteristic of young Lloyd George that he hoped for a great change in the atmosphere when the country was really aroused; and he proceeded to do his best to arouse it.