Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament/Henry Fawcett
VII.
"This is he who, felled by foes,
Sprang harmless up, refreshed by blows."
FOR twenty-one years the brightness of noonday has been to Henry Fawcett, "member for Hackney and Hindostan," as the blackness of midnight. As is well known, he has been stone blind during the whole period of his public life. The fact is a most painful one, which I allude to thus early, not for the purpose of exciting sympathy, but because it is impossible to estimate aright the magnitude of Mr. Faweett's achievements if the heaviness of the odds against which he has had to contend is not duly taken into account. There are always clever people ready to demonstrate that untoward calamities, which do not happen to themselves, are somehow blessings in disguise. Are you lamed for life? So much the better for you. Is there not thus effected an immense saving of shoe-leather? For the future you are independent of shoemakers. Are you deprived of sight? Good for you again; for is it not a fact that the blind have a marvellous gift of groping their way in the dark? Do not, for example, the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii testify that in their last agony the doomed inhabitants sought the aid of sightless guides to direct their flight? Most true, there is generally some compensation for the heaviest misfortune; but, it is, alas! as a rule, far too small for the loss sustained. And such, no doubt, has been the experience of the eminent politician and economist, Henry Fawcett.
Bereft of sight, he has achieved much; with sight, he would beyond question have achieved still more. For his is an exceedingly strong and healthy nature, as little prone to succumb to the enervating influences of prosperity as to the prostrating blows of adversity,—a true Samson Agonistes, whose locks, however closely shorn by unlucky chance, were bound to grow some day and somehow. His intellect is characterized by a vigor that is almost redundant, a tenacity of purpose that turns not back, and a personal courage curiously combined with caution, which it would be exceedingly difficult to match inside or outside of Parliament. Physically he is a picture of health and strength, one of the tallest men in the House, with long sinewy limbs and that peculiar poise about the shoulders suggestive of a leonine bound, which is generally observable in persons of extraordinary intrepidity of character. As might be expected of one in such fine animal condition, Mr. Fawcett's habitual mood is cheerful, even to mirthfulness. He has escaped being a mere athlete by becoming a scholar; and it is pretty certain, that, if he had not been a philosopher, he would have been a demagogue. He has strong natural affinities for the "unwashed" multitude. "March without the people," he would say with Ledru Rollin, "and 30U march into night: their instincts are a finger-pointing of Providence, always turned towaids real benefit."
Men cast in such a big mould as Mr. Fawcett are almost inevitably democrats. The mere gaudium certaminis of politics is life for them. With culture and honesty of purpose such as the Cambridge professor possesses, robust, hearty natures of this stamp make the most trustworthy Radical politicians. They have what is so necessary for political life, "staying power." They do not despair of progress because for a time there is an ebb in the popular tide. They know that high-water mark will again be reached before long; and, if they cannot do better, they are content to wait the event.
Henry Fawcett, M.P., was born in the neighborhood of Salisbury in the year 1833. His father, Alderman Fawcett of Salisbury, was born at Kirby Lonsdale in 1793, and is now consequently in his eighty-sixth year; and a haler old gentleman or more resolute Radical it would be difficult to find in all England. He came to Wiltshire from Westmoreland in his youth, and, after engaging for some time in trade, betook himself to the more congenial occupation of a gentleman farmer. His energy and intelligence as an agriculturist were conspicuous; and, when the anti-corn law agitatation was initiated, both were heartily enlisted on behalf of the league. Even yet he is an effective public speaker, and is a personal friend and warm admirer of Mr. Bright. Mr. Fawcett's mother is no less remarkable. Like her husband, the alderman, she is a sort of semper eadem no less in mind than in body. She is a keen politician,—on the right side, of course; and to her does Mr. Fawcett attribute, in no small measure, the strength of his own Radical convictions.
Thus happy in his parentage, the member for Hackney was no less so in other essential particulars affecting his childhood and youth. He was country bred,—and such a country, too,—imbibing no taste that was not equally good for head, heart, and body. Health, the essential condition of all great achievements, he stored up abundantly, while at the same time the discipline of his mind was by no means neglected. His family were neither rich nor poor, but in that "just middle" state which neither suggests to the youth that exertion is superfluous, nor inflicts on him the labor of acquirement as an unavoidable drudgery. Till his fourteenth year he attended a local school in the vicinity of Salisbury, whence he was removed to Queenwood College, Hants, where he remained for two years. There he had the good luck to benefit by the teaching of Professors Tyndall and Frankland. He next attended King's College, London; and in 1852 he was duly entered as a student of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. To Cambridge young Fawcett brought with him an unquenchable love of all manner of rural pursuits, the frame of an athlete, the ringing voice of a huntsman, and a tolerable store of learning. He did not neglect his opportunities at the university. He was an adept at boating, skating, riding, angling, walking, rackets, cricketing, and prize-taking. In 1856 he graduated seventh wrangler, and was subsequently elected a fellow of his college.
From a very early age he had displayed premonitory symptoms of a more than ordinary devotion to politics. While still an undergraduate, the writings of the late John Stuart Mill made a deep impression on his mind, and partly determined him to seek an entrance into Parliament by the time-honored avenue of the bar. He accordingly commenced to "keep terms" at Lincoln's Inn, where he would have been duly "called" had not the terrible calamity to which I have already alluded intervened.
In the autumn of 1858 he was one day out with a small party engaged in partridge-shooting. A covey rose, and flew over a slight elevation, on the remote side of which Mr. Fawcett had momentarily disappeared. A companion unfortunately fired at the instant his head topped the rising ground; and two pellets, with something like diabolic precision, neatly perforating the spectacles he was wearing, lodged themselves in the retinæ of the eyes, and "at one stride came the dark." From that day to this,
"Those eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
I Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star throughout the year,
Or man or woman."
The pain of the accident was soon over, and it remained for Mr. Fawcett to consider how far so irreparable a mischance had necessarily affected his habits of life and future prospects. His invincible pluck did not desert him for a moment. Luckily his academic training was completed; and the benchers of Lincoln's Inn, on hearing the sad facts of the case, considerately offered to "call" him to the bar without further to-do. He might succeed as a counsel in spite of his blindness. Armed with logic, imperturbability, and physical endurance such as his, one might undoubtedly accomplish much. Still, the drawbacks to a successful professional career were undeniable; and Mr. Fawcett, wisely it seems to me, resolved not to encounter them, but to take a straighter cut to Parliament.
Except in this particular, however, he determined that his blindness should make "no difference;" and it is wonderful how little it has actually affected his habits and intentions. In the very heart of London he has contrived to secure a modest house with a garden one-tenth of a mile long, where he can promenade all alone to his heart's content. He is never so happy as in the open air, and in his native Wiltshire his pedestrian feats have become almost proverbial. His topographical knowledge is so minute, that when his guides arc at fault he not unfrequently directs them,—from ear1y recollections of natural objects of course. He religiously frequents the university boat-race on the Thames, and is as heartily interested in the proceedings of the day as the keenest-eyed observer. At Cambridge he is stroke-oar of the "Ancient Mariners'" boat; and a better stroke no crew of "mariners," ancient or modern, need desire. He is a good swimmer. When the fens are frozen, he takes to his skates as naturally as a duck in the water takes to her webs. On such occasions his daughter, a graceful maiden of eleven winters, precedes her father, whistling playfully. He is likewise an ardent equestrian; and, when in residence at the university, seldom a day elapses that the professor of political economy may not be seen, accompanied by some one of his numerous friends, cantering fearlessly on Newmarket Heath or Across Hat. He occasionally even follows the hounds on a well-trained steed; and so hard a rider is he said to be, that the livery-stable keepers have two tariffs,—one ordinary for those who have not been seen in the society of Professor Fawcett, and one extraordinary for those who have. Add to this that Mr. Fawcett is one of the best and most indefatigable amateur salmon and trout fishers that can well be imagined, and it will readily be admitted that no great "difference" has overtaken him with regard to outdoor recreations. But, if this is the case with respect to his personal habits, it is none the less true of his political intentions. He had hoped to enter the House as a successful counsel. As it was, he had to seek admission without the aid of that quasi-passport, without fame, and without what is even still more indispensable to a parliamentary candidate, money,—not that he was by any means a poor man in the strict sense of the word. He has always been in comfortable circumstances, thanks to a provident father and his own exertions; but rather in the sense that his wants have been few and legitimate, rather than that his income has been large. But he has had no superfluous thousands with which to oil the electoral wheels of any constituency. He has, however, invariably got over this difficulty with characteristic boldness and commendable candor.
His first venture was with the electors of Southwark, in 1861, on the death of Sir Charles Napier, "Black Charlie." He did not know a soul in the borough, which he invaded with his secretary in a cab. They went straight to a printer's, and ordered a number of bills to be issued announcing the candidature of Henry Fawcett in the Radical interest. He had previously spoken in public,—once in Exeter Hall on trades-unionism, and once at Glasgow, at the Social Science Congress, with considerable acceptance; but to all, except the merest fraction of the electors, his very name was unknown. And, worse and worse, when they came to meet him, he was blind; and they soon had it from his own lips that he was not rich, and would employ neither paid agent nor canvasser. Was there ever such a madman? Howbeit, the great ability and striking gallantry of the blind candidate soon began to tell with the constituency; and there is no saying what might have happened if Mr. Fawcett had not been over-persuaded to retire before the poll to avoid the charge of creating a division in the Liberal ranks. The experience he had gained, however, was of the most valuable kind. It went to prove, incredible as it may appear, that the portals of the "rich man's club" at Westminster may be successfully forced at the cost of a few hundreds by candidates at once poor and honest, if only they have the requisite faith and ability to make the venture. In 1863 Mr. Fawcett contested the borough of Cambridge on the same principles that he had found to answer so unexpectedly well in Southwark. He was defeated, but by an insignificant majority. He next contested Brighton in 1864, warmly espousing the cause of the North in its struggle with the slaveholding States of the American Union. Again he was unsuccessful; but the following year, nothing daunted, he returned to the charge, and was elected by a large majority. In 1868 he was once more victorious; but at the general election of 1874—the annus mirabilis of Tory re-action—both he and his Liberal colleagues in the representation were thrown out, and replaced by Conservative nobodies.
It was impossible, however, that such a man should long be excluded from the legislature. In two months' time a vacancy occurred in the representation of the vast metropolitan constituency of Hackney, and the eyes of the Liberal electors were at once turned with one accord towards Mr. Fawcett. He was elected without difficulty; his great services to India, and his persistent opposition to all encroachments on Epping Forest and the New Forest, weighing heavily in his favor in the electoral balance.
In Parliament Mr. Fawcett's career has been one of no ordinary success. The blind Postmaster-General is recognized by all parties in the House as a speaker of decided mark, and his vote is always to be weighed as well as counted. He entered the legislature with a body of well-defined principles, and he has stuck to them manfully through evil and through good report. His political conceptions are, in a great measure, those of his friend, the late Mr. John Stuart Mill. Unlike Goethe, for example, it was the special function of that great and generous thinker to fertilize, not sterilize, the minds of other men.
"And methinks the work is nobler,
And a mark of greater might;
Better far to make a thinker
Than to make a proselyte,—
Nobler, for the sake of manhood,
Better, for the cause of truth,
Though your thinker be but rugged,
And your proselyte is smooth."
Mr. Fawcett's ideas may be described as ultra-individualist in their tendency. He is an "administrative Nihilist," who believes that government is at best a necessary evil, and that the less the people have of it, and the more they are left to seek their own happiness in their own way, the better for them. In a country like Germany, with its autocracy on the one hand and its socialism on the other, he would be between the upper and the nether millstone, and would assuredly, politically speaking, be speedily pounded to atoms. Here and in the United States the tendency is decidedly towards a more and more comprehensive individualism; but it is very doubtful whether, in several instances, Mr. Fawcett has not given us somewhat "too much of a good thing." His opposition, for example, to Mr. Mundella's Factory Acts Amendment Bill, limiting the labor of women in factories to nine hours, was, to say the least, an attitude of doubtful wisdom. If women could protect themselves from oppressive toil, then, of course, Mr. Fawcett was right; if the evidence was the other way, then he was wrong. The question is one of evidence solely; and I for one am of opinion that Mr. Fawcett's judgment was not in accordance with the evidence. He was willing—nay, has exerted himself manfully—to extend the benefits of factory legislation to the children of agricultural laborers, on the ground that they could not help themselves. How much better off were the majority of those for whose benefit the Nine Hours Bill was introduced? In reality hardly any.
Again: with respect to the licensing question, Mr. Fawcett's position has somewhat too much of the non possumus about it. The problem is one, doubtless, of very great difficulty; and certainly the Permissive Bill was a crude attempt to deal with it. But to tell us that local option is as objectionable as the Permissive Bill, or even more so, is to affirm one of two things,—either that the present licensing system is perfect and inviolable, or that free trade in liquor is the true remedy for the monstrous evils of intemperance to which society is on all hands admitted to be a prey. If no remedy is the true remedy, then we ought to know it.
These positions, however, which the member for Hackney defends with so much gallantry and so little regard for his own popularity, are, generally speaking, virtues in excess, and cannot for a moment be permitted to weigh with any rational mind in judging of his career as a legislator.
Who can ever forget the evening when the blind member was the only representative of the people who saw his way into the lobby where Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. P. A. Taylor were tellers against the dowry to the Princess Louise? What Londoner can ever be too grateful to him for preserving from imminent alienation the ancient rights of the people in Epping Forest? If he had been member for Hackney at the time he was fighting so doggedly against the threatened enclosures, there might have been some suspicion that it was done merely to gratify his constituents. As it was, not even that pardonable kind of self-interest can be laid to his charge. It will likewise be long remembered by the skilled artisans of London with what courage and devotion he acted as chairman of the late Mr. George Odger's committee in Southwark, when that republican artisan statesman was so near obtaining a well-merited seat in the legislature of his country.
In theory Mr. Fawcett is himself a republican; but his practice, alas! has not always squared with his principle. But it is as the "member for India" that Mr. Fawcett's name will be handed down to posterity. He has the largest constituency of any man in the world; and his responsibilities have become as real as if they were imposed by law. He is the true Minister for India, whoever may fill the office. It is not to Lord Hartington, but to Henry Fawcett, that millions of Indians look for redress of grievances, for words of sympathy and comfort. The unique position which the member for Hackney holds in the hearts of the Indian people of itself makes Mr. Fawcett a power in the state. His presence at the India office would do more to secure India than twenty Afghan expeditions. This being so, the ministerial wisdom of his appointment as Postmaster-General is by no means obvious. Mr. Fawcett has been at enormous pains to acquaint himself with the actual state of India; and yet his first application to the subject was more like an accident than any thing else. He happened to oppose, as a gross and shameful injustice, the proposal of the Government of the day to saddle the Indian exchequer with the cost of a particular entertainment given to the Sultan of Turkey. Bit by bit his knowledge of the systematic manner in which India is "exploited" by England grew; and he at last resolved to subject the whole question of Indian finance and Indian administration to a patient and searching analysis. For years he worked four hours every day at the tangled skein as one would for an examination; and, when data failed him, he had influence enough to secure the appointment of a parliamentary committee on Indian finance, which sat for three whole sessions. At the end of the investigation he had as fully mastered the subject as it was possible to do. He has all the more important figures by heart, and can hurl them with crushing effect at the head of whoever takes it upon him to unfold the Indian budget. It is one of the beneficial effects, if I may so speak, of Mr. Fawcett's blindness, that he speaks, and does not read, his figures to the House. These, through his youthful but smart secretary, he selects so appropriately and uses so sparingly that his financial statements are singularly lucid and unencumbered, each set of figures being the evidence of some solid argument. By dint of great perseverance, the country has at last, in some measure, been got to realize that India is as near as possible a sucked orange; and that, if we do not retrace our steps and repent us of the evil we have been doing, the "brightest gem in her Majesty's diadem" will speedily be in pawn. At this moment an Indian bankruptcy stares us in the face, with all its terrible consequences. The limit of taxation has been reached, while the expenditure of the administration is unlimited as ever. To Mr. Fawcett, more than to any other man or half-dozen of men, do we owe our knowledge of the appalling condition of the "brightest gem," which, if one could imagine a gem being so ill-behaved, may explode any day with such violence as to shake to its foundations the throne not merely of the "Empress of India," but that of the Queen of England also. In this grave relation the voice of Henry Fawcett has been as the voice of one crying in the wilderness. If the British people have not made their paths straight, it has not been his fault. The Indian people are frequently taxed by Anglo-Indians with ingratitude. I may mention, by the way, that Mr. Fawcett has not found it so. Some time previous to the last general election, a great number of very poor Hindoos subscribed a sum sufficient to defray the cost of his return for Hackney. The fund was invested for the purpose in the names of Sir Charles Dilke, Professor Cowell, and Mr. Dacosta.
Mr. Fawcett is not merely an excellent platform speaker and a trenchant parliamentary debater, but he is a political economist of no mean order. His "Manual of Political Economy" has run through five editions, and ought to be in the hands of every youthful student of economic science. The "Economic Position of the British Laborer" is likewise a valuable contribution towards the elucidation of a painful subject; while "Pauperism: its Causes and Remedies," though, in my opinion, mistaken in some of its conclusions, is yet an eminently suggestive book.
In addition to the above works Mr. Fawcett published in June, 1879, "Free Trade and Protection," one entire edition of which was shipped for Australia and the United States, while another was taken up by the Cobden Club. There is, besides, a goodly volume of his collected "Speeches," which will well repay perusal, and another of "Essays," the conjoint production of Mrs. Fawcett and himself.
In conclusion, I cannot mention the name of this accomplished lady without according her my small meed of praise. If it was passing sad that Mr. Fawcett should lose the use of his own eyes, it was passing fortunate that he should obtain the aid of such another pair. When I think of this, it almost repents me that I should have spoken so slightingly of the compensation theorists in the first paragraph of this sketch.