On one occasion Fawcett spoke on India for nearly two hours. He had the House absolutely in his hand the whole of that time, and never once had to hark back. The figures that he dealt with were exceedingly complicated and numerous. Later an M.P. congratulated him and expressed his surprise at his wonderful memory. Fawcett, with his habitual modesty, said, ‘There is nothing strange about it. You know I see the thing mentally as I suppose you see whatever you are looking upon now; really that is the difference.’ The M.P. replied, ‘Yes, but it doesn’t account for it at all. I see and forget—you see and don’t forget, there’s the difference.’ [Sidenote: Sympathy from Suffering.] A Cambridge professor said of Fawcett when he began to make those remarkable speeches on Indian affairs: ‘We, I think, were mainly struck with the extraordinary intellectual feats that they were for a man under his calamity; but the effect produced in India was of a different and profounder kind. There was the sense of the largeness of heart of the statesman who had known suffering, and a gratitude for his broad sympathy with all whom he could protect against what he conceived to be oppression of any kind.’ [Sidenote: No time in Parliament for India.] He did not hesitate to speak on Indian affairs to his constituency, and to ask of them their sympathy and interest. At a meeting in Brighton he said that the most trumpery question ever brought before Parliament, a wrangle over the purchase of a picture or a road through a park excited more interest than the welfare of the many millions of our Indian fellow-subjects. Constituencies were said to take no interest in the subject. They would be some day forced to take an interest, if affairs were neglected in the future as they had been in the past. ‘The people of India have not votes; they cannot bring so much pressure to bear upon Parliament as can be brought by one of our great railway companies; but with some confidence I believe that I shall not be misinterpreting your wishes if, as your representative, I do whatever can be done by one humble individual to render justice to the defenceless and powerless.’ That last sentence could be taken as his policy and motto through life. Could there be a more valiant one for a blind man, or for any one fighting against great odds for the right? ‘I do whatever can be done by one humble individual to render justice to the defenceless and powerless.’ He does not limit whom or where. There are no limitations. That they are defenceless and powerless is all the recommendation which they need to claim his warmest interest and ceaseless effort to help them to find the way out of their misery. CHAPTER XXIII THE ‘ONE MAN WHO CARED FOR INDIA’ Defeated at Brighton—Spectacles and the Man—Elected for Hackney. [Sidenote: Effect of Speeches in India.]