Fawcett regretted that telegrams were too expensive to be a convenience for any but the rich. The betting ring and the Stock Exchange were its principal patrons. He was deeply interested in lowering the cost, so that telegrams could become useful to the ‘plain people.’ Among the first deputations to be given an audience by the new Postmaster, was one requesting cheap telegrams. He set himself with a will to get them, writing and speaking to urge this new reform. It meant a fresh expense for the Treasury, at least at the beginning, and he could not get the consent of that department. But there were many members of the House of Commons who favoured the change, and pushed it, relying on the Postmaster-General’s well-known sympathy. In 1883 they succeeded in outvoting the Government, and the adoption of sixpenny telegrams became certain. [Sidenote: The Telegraph Boys.] Fawcett always had a fellow-feeling for the small boy, and he was very anxious that the telegraph boys used in the Post Office should be kept in the service, mounting from their positions as understudies of Mercury to those of greater distinction and better pay. When on a visit to a friend in a suburb of a large manufacturing town, Fawcett found that his friend was able by telephone to direct his business in the town by half an hour’s conversation, and was then free for the rest of the day. This so greatly impressed Fawcett, that he became eager to give the public as large an enjoyment of telephones as possible. He was in favour of granting the widest possible liberty to qualified persons to start telephone exchanges, making the condition that the Post Office should be paid a royalty of ten per cent., and that no written telephone messages should be delivered. One of his last acts was the approval of a licence containing these terms, which was signed by his successor. He refused firmly but gently, in his last interview at the Post Office, to grant to a gentleman the protection which he asked for a small telephone company, thus showing himself to the last true to his belief in open competition. [Sidenote: An Executive Genius.] We have now seen something of Fawcett’s task at the Post Office, thirty-three years ago, and how he strove to do the work largely in accordance with our most approved and up-to-date methods. Some of his tools are now obsolete, the work has been changed in detail, but the philosophy and wisdom, the business sense and control which he showed in his four and a half years of office were what could be considered to-day so remarkable, so successful, as to amount to executive genius.