Mr. Justice Scott said, speaking of the ideal for which Fawcett worked: ‘It is not enough for us Englishmen to say that we have given to India order, peace, security and justice, roads, railroads, and other material benefits of Western civilisation, but it should be our duty to ourselves and in co-operation with the people of India in the great task of education, private, social and political, never to rest content till every individual of the teeming masses of India can take an intelligent part as a citizen in the management of their own concerns. This is a great idea. It may seem the Utopian dream of an optimist. Mr. Fawcett was no doubt an optimist.’ Fawcett most powerfully influenced people by his speeches. His appearance was arresting and interesting, while his brave disregard of his blindness claimed instant sympathy and admiration. His voice, which was unusually powerful, softened in tone with years, and his language grew less severe; he uttered each word clearly, and what he said was clearly thought out. What he wanted was never for himself. What he fought for was invariably to help some one less fortunate, less free, less happy, than the blind man who pleaded so earnestly. He delivered two speeches in 1872 and 1873 on the Indian Budgets of those years which an adversary said ‘he considered to be the most remarkable intellectual efforts he had ever heard.’ Of course Fawcett, unlike other speakers, had no notes to help him, yet he gave an exposition of complex questions with a clearness which might have raised the envy of the most accomplished Chancellor of the Exchequer. [Sidenote: How Fawcett prepared his Speeches.] The way he prepared his speeches is interesting. First, he would master the vital facts and figures he wanted. Then he would press into his service some friend well up on the subject with which he wished to deal, and together they would go over the ground until Fawcett felt that the facts were arranged so as to express most clearly and pithily his contention. Lucid arrangement helped his memory. His object was primarily to be clear, to say a thing as well as he could. He did not hesitate to repeat the same illustrations and statements, and paid little attention to rhetoric, epigram or elegance. He wished to hammer certain leading principles into people’s heads, and he did this so effectively that they stuck there, and he pressed his points so vividly and insistently that he made his audiences, no matter where he found them, usually become his supporters, and even workers for his policy. [Illustration: _Photo. Mansell_ HENRY FAWCETT From a painting by Sir Hubert von Herkomer ]