His short absence between his defeat at Brighton and his fresh appearance as the representative for Hackney was sincerely regretted in the House of Commons on all sides. Warm friends missed his genial personality and the jovial meetings at his seat, whence many merry stories and much gossip emanated. Those who saw Fawcett casually found it difficult to believe that he was blind. It was his unfailing habit to turn to the person to whom he was speaking as if he saw them. He knew his way about the House of Commons so well that he was quick and sure in all his movements. He would cross the floor of the House and, bowing to the Speaker, take his seat with familiar assurance. His father used often to come up from Salisbury, and Fawcett would take him to the privileged strangers’ seats under the gallery, and bring his Parliamentary friends to talk to the old gentleman. One of the favourite ways of drawing attention to departmental misdeeds is to ask questions of the Minister of State concerned to be answered by him at the beginning of the sitting. These questions were sent up in writing and then read aloud to the House by the members who asked them. The Rt. Hon. Thomas Burt, one of the first working-class representatives, and an old friend of Fawcett’s, says: ‘Mr. Fawcett often put long questions, and he repeated them word for word as they were printed on the order paper, never a slip, never the slightest hesitation.’ [Sidenote: The hard-worked Hen.] Fawcett was at once added to the committee on Indian finance appointed a few days before his election. This was the fourth year that this committee had worked. _Punch_ said that it reminded him ‘of the hen that laid so many eggs she could never come to the hatching of any.’ And indeed it never published a report, though it collected a great deal of most valuable evidence. It was before this committee that Lord Salisbury gave evidence on the difficulty for an Indian Secretary of State to withstand the demands of the Treasury. Continued resistance on his part was ‘to stop the machine.’ ’so,’ said Fawcett, ‘you must either stop the machine, or resign, or go on tacitly submitting to injustice.’ ‘I should accept the statement,’ replied Lord Salisbury, ‘barring the word tacitly. I should go on submitting with loud remonstrances.’ But a strong echo in the public conscience would be necessary for these remonstrances to be of any value to India, and this is what Fawcett saw. CHAPTER XXIV FAMINE, TURKS AND INDIANS _Punch_ and Fawcett—The Indian Famine—Parliamentary Interest aroused in India—Bulgarian Atrocities—Afghanistan War—Gladstone’s Faith in Fawcett—A £9,000,000 Mistake.