He loved a fight, and believed in competition to determine merit, but his spirit revolted at the unjust restraint of the rights of mind and virtue by brute force. He found that many paupers were women, and that their chance to support themselves was often negligible. So few wage-earning opportunities were open to them that their employers were able to make what terms they pleased with these impoverished seekers for work. Poor women often gladly accepted wages which were insufficient to hold soul and body together. Fawcett enthusiastically advocated that women should be given a fair chance to do what work they could do well. He spoke and worked to have women admitted to the examinations at Cambridge. He did not attempt to dwell on the equality or inequality of man and woman, but consistent with his lively sense of fairness, he felt that they should be given at least an equal chance to develop whatever powers they had. The sad fate of the hundreds of women whose lives were forced into useless inactivity depressed him: he did what he could all his life to open many new fields to them. [Sidenote: Zeal for Fair Play.] His single-handed fight against a Bill restricting the work of adult women was in the same direction. In this he took a very independent position. He considered that restrictions on adult women were an infringement of their liberty, and that it would probably have the effect of lessening their already narrow chances of employment. His quickness to consider this second point was evidenced also in his treatment of a question arising out of the bill for the compulsory registration of teachers. A lady quite unknown to Fawcett wrote that it would tend to prevent many a young woman who was not regularly employed in teaching from adding to, or temporarily earning, her livelihood: he at once answered that that side of the question had not struck him, but that he would call upon her immediately to hear her statement of facts. Mrs. Fawcett, of course, augmented and shared her husband’s natural enthusiasm for the enfranchisement of women. When she was asked to speak at Brighton on Woman’s Suffrage some of his constituents objected, fearing that it would react unfavourably on Fawcett’s political position, but he would not hear of preventing her carrying out her plan, and did then, as always, everything to help her in her cause. [Sidenote: Sympathy with Woman’s Suffrage.] Since these pioneer efforts Mrs. Fawcett has been and is one of the strongest and most successful workers in a rational and dignified campaign for obtaining the suffrage for women. She and her daughter have effectively made great sacrifices for the cause which they have so much advanced by their eloquent enthusiasm and disinterested and legitimate efforts.