3-052-639 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The new Postmaster-General, Professor Fawcett, M.P., 1880. '...in 1858, [Henry Fawcett] met with an unfortunate accident in shooting, and lost the sight of both eyes. Being thus disabled for ordinary professional business, he devoted himself to political science, as a disciple of John Stuart Mill, and produced a "Manual of Political Economy,''...published in 1863. This text-book has been highly approved, and its author was in that year elected Professor of Political Economy in the University of Cambridge...He joined Mr. Mill in claiming the political enfranchisement of women, and in this, as in other public efforts, Mr. Fawcett has had the active co-operation of his wife. She was Miss Millicent Garrett, sister to Mrs. Garrett-Anderson, and she is joint author with him of a volume of essays...The amazing blunder and official blindness recently detected with regard to the costs of [the Afghan War] came into Mr. Fawcett's re-election speech at Hackney last week. The confessed fact...is a monstrous proof of the ruinous way in which Imperialism...is prone to carry on its wars of aggression and invasion, counting neither money nor human lives - millions of treasure and tens of thousands of men - till after satiating its lust of military triumph'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.