Fawcett, HENRY, was born in 1833 at Salisbury. His father, William Fawcett (born at Kirkby Lonsdale, Westmorland, in 1793), settled at Salisbury in early life, entered into business as a draper, married (1827) Mary, daughter of Mr Cooper, solicitor of that city, and was mayor in 1832. Henry was the third of their four children. His parents took a keen and active interest in politics and were decided Liberals. In 1841 Mr W. Fawcett took a farm at Longford, near Salisbury, under the then Earl of Radnor, one of the few anti-protectionist land-owners of that time. The political and social influences under which Henry Fawcett's youth was spent deeply affected his character and aspirations. As a mere lad at school he formed the intention of entering parliament, mainly in the hope that from that vantage-ground he would be able to do something to promote the education of the people and to improve the lot of the agricultural labourer. His natural impulses were far less for a life of study than for one of outdoor exercise and field-sports, which were his principal source of pleasure throughout life. He, however, succeeded in curbing his love for them sufficiently to devote the energies of his powerful mind to win success first of all in a student's life. For it was through a successful career at school and college, and afterwards at the bar, that he hoped to reach the House of Commons. Henry Fawcett was sent in succession to Queenwood College, Hants, King's College School, and King's College, London, and in 1852 to Cambridge, where in 1856 he graduated as seventh wrangler, and was elected to a fellowship at Trinity Hall. He commenced reading for the bar, and contemporary private letters show that he kept firmly to his boyish intention to enter parliament, and to work for a better time for agricultural labourers, natives of our Indian empire, and in general for all who were 'desolate and oppressed.' He was greatly influenced at this time by the writings of John Stuart Mill, and afterwards by his personal friendship. In September 1858 an event occurred which would have crushed all heart and hope out of any less dauntless spirit. When shooting partridges on Harnham Hill, near Salisbury, shots from his father's gun entered both Fawcett's eyes, and the beautiful scene on which he had looked a moment before was blotted out for ever. With characteristic courage he at once realised and faced the extent of his misfortune, and resolved that it should not prevent him from entering parliament. He never once complained, and immediately set himself to work to adapt himself to the altered conditions of his life. He gave up the bar; he had never looked upon it as anything but a stepping-stone to the House of Commons. He now determined upon a more direct pursuit of his ultimate object. 'Blind, poor, unknown, he would force his way into the House of Commons.' His first candidature was at Southwark in November 1860. He retired before the day of the poll; but he had kept up a spirited contest for a month, and done much to remove the impression that blindness was an insuperable obstacle to a parliamentary career. His next fight was at Cambridge in
January 1863, where he went to the poll, but was defeated by the Conservative candidate. About this time he brought out the result of several years' work, his Manual of Political Economy, a textbook based mainly on the lines laid down by Ricardo and J. S. Mill: the book has passed through a very large number of editions. The opportune appearance of this work no doubt contributed to his election to the chair of Political Economy in the university of Cambridge in the autumn of 1863, a post which he held without interruption till his death. The best known of his other writings are The Economic Position of the British Labourer and Protection and Free Trade. In 1864 he fought a contested parliamentary election at Brighton, and was defeated; but he had gained a hold on the constituency which led to his return in the general election of the following year; in June 1865 his boyish ambition was fulfilled, and he entered parliament as member for Brighton, and was again returned for the same place in 1868. In April 1867 he married Millicent, daughter of Mr Newson Garrett of Aldeburgh, Suffolk. They had one child, Philippa, born in 1868.
Henry Fawcett's candidature in his various electoral contests had not been favourably regarded by the wire-pullers of his own party; and from the beginning of his active political life he showed an independence of party ties and a disregard of party discipline which were often misconstrued as half-hearted Liberalism. His first step in the direction of political independence was joining the so-called 'Tea-room' party, which virtually insured the passing of Mr Disraeli's Household Suffrage Bill of 1867. He had pledged himself to support the extension of the suffrage, and he did not wish to refuse household suffrage because it was offered by the Conservative party. He devoted himself to urging forward measures for the abolition of religious tests at the universities, to the extension of the factory acts to agricultural children, and to the promotion of universal compulsory education. He also took up two questions with which his name will always be identified, the preservation of commons and open spaces, and the government of India and the condition of its native populations. In all these questions his chief foes were among the leaders of his own party, and the friction between him and them became so acute that the parliamentary secretaries to the Treasury ceased to count him as a member of the party. Fawcett regarded with special distrust Mr Gladstone's attitude with regard to religious tests in education. When Mr Gladstone brought forward his Irish University Bill in 1873, Fawcett offered it a most uncompromising opposition. One of its features which he most strongly condemned was contained in the so-called 'gagging' clauses, which prohibited the teaching of modern history, philosophy, and theology in the new university. The debate on the second reading resulted in the defeat of the bill by three votes, and Mr Gladstone's government received a blow from which it never rallied. After this a bill introduced by Fawcett for the abolition of tests in Trinity College, Dublin, became law. In the general election of February 1874 Fawcett lost his seat for Brighton; but his parliamentary position was now assured, and friends and foes alike deplored his absence from the House of Commons. His geniality and straightforwardness prevented him from having any personal enemies, and those who differed from him the most widely were among the most eager to welcome him back to the House of Commons. Through an informality in the Hackney election of February 1874, the seats were declared vacant, and Fawcett became member about six weeks after his defeat at Brighton. The Liberal party having suffered a great reverse in the general election of 1874, the causes which had separated him from the official heads of his party were removed, and he joined cordially with them in opposition to the policy adopted by Lord Beaconsfield's government in reference to the Eastern Question. He continued his work for India, and was popularly known as 'the member for Hindustan.' He also pursued his efforts for the preservation of open spaces; and the retention of Epping Forest, the New Forest, and other regions of silvan beauty is a debt which the nation owes, in part at least, to the labours of one whose eyes could never behold them. While supporting the Factory Acts in their application to children, he was an opponent of legislative restrictions upon the industry of women, and a warm supporter of the claims of women to the protection of representation. He also supported various forms of proportional representation. He always took a lively interest in the welfare of Ireland, and hoped that much good would come of efforts to allay religious animosities in that country; he also looked for benefit resulting from the creation of a peasant proprietary and from the development of the industrial resources of Ireland. He never supported the Home Rule party, as he believed a separate parliament for Ireland would be injurious both to that country and to England. When Mr Gladstone was returned at the head of a large parliamentary majority in 1880, Fawcett had again been elected for Hackney by 18,366 votes against 8708 given for his opponent. Mr Gladstone offered him the Postmaster-generalship in his government, but without a seat in the cabinet. It was generally felt that his political position entitled him to cabinet rank, but fears were expressed that his blindness would render it impossible for him to guard cabinet secrets with the requisite jealousy. He accepted the decision with cheerfulness, but by no means regarded it as final.
His situation was not an easy one, for his official position prevented him from criticising the government, while he had no voice or control of any kind in the preparation of its measures. He would have found the position unbearable but for the extraordinary vigour with which he threw himself into an entirely new field of work, the administration of a great government department. Before he had been a fortnight at the Post-office he had set before himself the task of carrying out five reforms: (1) the introduction of the parcel post; (2) the introduction of postal orders; (3) a scheme for encouraging small savings; (4) the promotion of life-insurance; (5) sixpenny telegrams; and these, with the one exception of the life-insurance scheme, he was able to set on foot in such a manner as to insure their successful working. He was the antithesis of red-tape and officialism; he regarded himself and his department as nothing but the servants of the public; and every act of his official life was influenced by the conviction that his duty was to serve the convenience and interests of the public by all means in his power. He refused to regard the General Post-office simply as a department of revenue, and held that the outlying districts where the delivery of letters, &c. was a source of expense should have postal facilities granted to them out of the surplus revenue yielded by populous regions. His care for the well-being of every member of the immense staff of the Post-office (90,000 persons) was manifested in a variety of ways; he instituted an annual week's holiday for country postmen, improved the pay and conditions of employment of several branches of the service, encouraged and extended the employment of women, appointed female medical officers for the female staff in London, Liverpool, and Manchester, and extended the system of good-conduct stripes carrying an extra shilling a week with them from the town to the country letter-carriers. If the humblest employé had to be censured or dismissed, Henry Fawcett would spend hours in most careful weighing of all the evidence, and he would be completely unable to rest or think of anything personal to himself unless he were thoroughly convinced that justice had been done. This sensitiveness on his part to his duty to the public and to the well-being of his staff won him the most devoted affection in all ranks. A serious illness in 1882-83 revealed for the first time the place he had gained, not only as an upright politician but as a man, in the gratitude and affection of his countrymen and countrywomen. He seemed completely to recover; his immense frame (his height was 6 ft. 3 in.) appeared as stalwart as ever, and he took pleasure in riding, fishing, swimming, skating, &c. as of old. But the first illness had probably weakened him more than any one perceived. In the autumn of 1884 he caught a severe cold which turned to congestion of the lungs, and he died after a few days' illness, November 6, 1884. His most memorable characteristics were his chivalrous nature and his power of entering into pain and loss, as well as into pleasures which he could never share. It was this that made him the friend of women seeking to earn an honest living; of agricultural labourers going to bed at sundown because they could neither read nor write; of natives of India living on 3d. a day, and paying taxes on one of the first necessities of life; and it was this that made him strive to preserve the open heaths and lovely forests, although his own eyes could never enjoy them. He sometimes said of himself that he had no imagination; but there were those who thought that it was a very true and rare kind of imagination which enabled him so vividly to realise what made the happiness or unhappiness of lives very far removed from his own.
He was buried at Trumpington, near Cambridge. A national memorial has been erected to him in Westminster Abbey. See Leslie Stephen's Life of Henry Fawcett (1885); and his article in the Dictionary of National Biography (vol. xviii. 1889).