Fawcett never deviated from his school-boy longing for a political career. But despite the recognition which he had obtained as a speaker and thinker, even his best friends felt that his dream of a political future was worse than impracticable. They tried to dissuade him from his purpose, and make him content with a writer’s life of study, thought and theory. Opposition, the breath of life to this dauntless man, only added another stimulating obstacle to those he rejoiced to overcome—blindness, lack of money, and lack of distinguished origin. He had made up his mind to be a statesman before his accident; and he would in no wise falter. In the wonderful crucible of his genial kindliness, the opposition of his friends was distilled into a warm co-operation. He forced them to believe in his powers and future, and changed them into his enthusiastic political backers. His blindness, which appealed to the gentleness and pity of many, with him became a recognised force to help him to great feats of memory and prodigies of concentration. His very inability to read books and newspapers compelled him to cultivate his memory and tirelessly to think over the problems he wished to master. As a result of constant practice, he became able to memorise statistical information and use it in debate in a way which utterly baffled men of average ability. Even the most brilliant men of his day would have to use notes where Fawcett could trust to his memory alone. [Sidenote: A Telling Speech.] As we have said, a year after his blindness, with Brown to guide him, he went to Aberdeen, and spoke before the British Association. His paper there on the ‘Social and Economical Influence of the New Gold’ made a profound impression, and won him his first public recognition as an economist and statesman. He was much pleased with the result of his first effort in public, and the cordiality with which he was personally received. But his sociability was not, as we know, confined to learned persons. During a journey he found himself in a small Scottish inn with a lonely dinner in prospect; he was cheered to hear voices in the next room. He sent for the landlord and asked who was there. ‘Some commercial gents,’ was the reply. Fawcett asked the landlord to take his compliments to the ‘commercial gents,’ upon which he received an invitation to dine with them. He accepted with alacrity, and passed a most jovial evening in their company. He next spoke at the Social Science Association at Bradford on the Protection of Labour from Immigration, and also on the theory and tendency of strikes. He made several loyal friends there, and his manifest ability led some of them to wish he might become a parliamentary candidate for a northern Borough.