------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXVIII AT HOME AND AT COURT Appreciating Opponents—Hackney Address—Proportional Representation—Justice for Women—A State Concert—Humble Friendships—Pigs—Salisbury again. [Sidenote: Appreciating Opponents.] The same respect for the individuality of others which made Fawcett unwilling to punish a subordinate if he could honourably avoid it, which made him often detect good qualities in the offender to compensate for the offence, made him also quick to respect and admire an adversary, even when strongly repudiating his principles. Fawcett never forgot that his opponent was a human being, however different their political creeds. In his later years his sympathy may not have been any deeper than in his vigorous youth, but it expressed itself more gently and more skilfully. When his fine wrath was roused, he still had at his command barbed arrows of sarcasm and thunders of denunciation, but his speech was more apt to be kindly. He trusted more than in his less experienced days to force of example and to irrefutable logic. His fairness and justice stood out in fine contrast to the hectic verbal warfare raging between rival factions. When, on 13th October 1884, he spoke in public for the last time, he administered a grave rebuke to ‘the spirit of mutual intolerance,’ saying: [Sidenote: ‘Prudence and Patriotism.’] ‘If we take a calm review of the situation ... we refuse to enter into useless recriminations and taunts about the past. I still have not relinquished the hope ... that the counsels of common sense, prudence, and patriotism will prevail.... Can we come to any other conclusion than that the present is a time when the dictates of prudence and patriotism demand that everything should be done to lessen, rather than to intensify, the bitterness of party strife.’