But he still preferred a small independence to a big dependence. Perhaps he was right. Probably he had ideas as to the way of conducting a legal business which would not have always gratified any old-fashioned firm of country solicitors.
The young solicitor started quite simply by putting a brass name-plate on the door of Morvin House, their little dwelling at Criccieth. He then began to practise in his uncle’s back parlour.
It was a daring venture for an unknown village youth; but after a few months he began to get under way. His diaries of 1885 punctuate with thrilling eagerness the opening steps in his professional career—his first case in the Police Court, his first service of an order, his first plea in the County Court. On June 24th he records with glee that he won all his cases. “Never had a more successful field-day.” On July 9th he is attending Penrhyn Sessions for the first time, opposing the transfer of a license. On September 8th he is in the Revision Courts. “Came off better than Liberals ever did.” In fact, he marches in these first skirmishes from victory to victory.
So successful was he, in fact, that in this year (1885) he opened an office in the High Street at Portmadoc, not far from the building in which he had been articled. He began in a very small house, and remained there for some years before moving to the corner house where the legend “Messrs. Lloyd George and George” is still prominent in the window. This corner house was previously a public-house known as “The Fox Inn.” There the brothers—for now William had joined David in practice—took the end of the lease, and finally secured the freehold. There, in that dispossessed hostelry, William George practises to-day (1920).
This year and the years that followed in David’s life were crammed with intense activities. The diaries show that day after day he rose between five and six o’clock. He devoted the cream of his energies to the active pursuit of the law. But he could never be a man of one interest. He was also, during these same months, fiercely energetic both in religion and politics. He was constantly reading sermons and listening to sermons. He often spoke from the pulpit, after that liberal fashion encouraged in the Free Churches.
But gradually in these diaries the political interest begins to loom larger. When the autumn General Election of 1885 comes on, he takes an active part with pen and voice. On October 17th he goes to the Tory member’s meeting, and is with difficulty restrained from taking part. On November 18th he makes an impassioned speech in defence of Mr. Chamberlain, and is tremendously cheered. On November 24th he goes to a Tory meeting and finds that he is the chief butt of their attack. He shows his precocious political shrewdness by the satisfaction he feels in thus drawing the enemy’s fire.
Instead of injuring the practice of his profession by these public displays of courage, he soon found that he was really attracting to his house and office a new class of client, the discontented farmers of the county. First one and then another began coming to him, at first privily and then confidently. They came on tithes, and on rents, and on rates. He took up some of these cases and scored successes which resounded through the county. The result was that other men came who had never before been to lawyers, and he began to open up a new vein of business. Law, after all, can sometimes pay, even as a remedy for injustice.
He was, indeed, now becoming a very busy solicitor of the kind which in the provinces is not easily distinguished from a barrister. The fact that a solicitor can address a County Court and a Petty Sessional Court gives him, outside the great centres of English life, a practical command of both branches of the law and abolishes that rather absurd pedantry of divided function. This power of speech suited young Lloyd George very well. It gave him a new training in public address, and it provided him with a new weapon for asserting public rights. From the time of that great nation of lawyers—the Romans—the Law Court has always been second only to the Senate House as an instrument of popular power. Mr. Lloyd George showed to the Welsh people that, in the integrity of the British law, they had a new resource for the recovery of their ancient rights.
But never at any time did he allow the call of the law to divert him from politics. Day by day his diaries reflect his passionate interest in the struggle of 1885. When the first results come in he is profoundly disappointed. “There is no cry for the towns,” he writes on November 26th. “Humdrum Liberalism won’t win elections.” Then, on December 4th:
“Great Liberal victories in counties. Very glad of it. Am convinced that this is all due to Chamberlain’s speeches. Gladstone had no programme that would draw at all.”