een attacked before--or since--in his pages.

In looking through the volumes of _Punch_ one is apt to forget that the
strong situations and stirring events by which a caricaturist's hit is
made effective at the time of publication fade from one's memory. The
cartoon in all its strength remains a record of an event which has lost
its interest. One cannot always realise that the drawing was only strong
because the feeling and interest at the time of its conception demanded
it. Allowance should therefore be made for the villain's ugly
caricature, if it is a good drawing, prophetically correct, and
therefore historically interesting.

Perhaps no cartoon of mine in _Punch_ caused such hostile criticism as
"The New Cabinet" (August 27, 1892). It gave great offence to the
Gladstonians. The Radical Press attacked me ferociously, and as I think
most unfairly, for they treated it politically and not pictorially, and
severely reprimanded Mr. Punch for publishing it. Had it been a
Conservative Cabinet the Tory Press would not have resented it or
allowed narrow-minded party politics to prejudice their mind in such
trivial matters. _Punch_ is supposed to be non-political. Its present
editor is impartial. Mr. Punch's traditions are Whig, and somehow or
other a certain class of its readers at that particular crisis was
strongly opposed to the two sides of a question being treated. Yet I
venture to say two-thirds of the readers of _Punch_ are Conservatives,
and should therefore be amused. It is impossible to treat a strong
political subject--such as the meeting of that particular Cabinet
caricatured by me--without offending some readers by amusing others,
unless, as I say, the subject is treated in a colourless manner. This
particular cartoon hurt because it hit a strong situation in a truthful
and straight-forward manner, and subsequent events proved it to be a
correct conception. Yet at the time no name was too bad for me, and as
these are my confessions, let me assure the public that had the Cabinet
been a Conservative one I would have treated it in exactly the same way;
and it is my firm conviction that had such been the case I would have
given no offence either inside or outside of Mr. Punch's office.

My readers will sympathise with me. I am to draw political cartoons
without being political; I am to draw caricatures without being
personal; I am to be funny without holding my subject up to ridicule; I
am to be effective without