Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/95

 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