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anti-slavery cause both in and out of Parliament, as was also Charles Buxton, M.P., uncle of our late President (and father of the present Viscount Buxton), who wrote his father's life.

In 1895, after the death of Mr. Edmund Sturge, Sir T. F. Buxton was appointed Vice-President of the Anti-Slavery Society about the time of his acceptance of the Governorship of South Australia. On his return in 1899 he was offered and accepted the Presidency in succession to Mr. Arthur Pease, M.P. There have been only four Presidents of our Society from its foundation in 1839, the first two being Thomas Clarkson and Samuel Gurney, M.P. (the latter an uncle of our late President), and it is interesting to notice that the period during which the last two Presidents have occupied the post has been almost exactly the same, namely sixteen years.

The main facts of Sir Fowell Buxton's life are given in the appended Press notices. Among his many activities on behalf of native races, we may mention the prominent part which he took, in association with his kinsman W. E. Forster, Dr. Hodgkin, and the Society of Friends, in organizing relief for the freed people in the United States at the close of the Civil War; his deep practical interest in the British East Africa Company and its efforts to open up East Africa to legitimate commerce; and his constant support of the Home for Freed Women Slaves in Cairo, in the days when the slave trade in Egypt was a living issue.

When the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was amalgamated with the Aborigines Protection Society, Sir Fowell Buxton continued as President of the new organization. During the last five years our Society has been confronted with some of the gravest problems in its history, and in all these the President's controlling hand has been evident. The Society has taken a large share in the exposure of the abuses of the Congo, Putumayo, and Portuguese Slavery, and its part has been carried out under his personal guidance and direction. His wise and cautious judgment has been of the greatest value to the Committee, which has to exercise constant vigilance and at the same time discrimination in dealing with complaints of abuses and injustice from all parts of the world. Only those who know his work in this connexion intimately can fully appreciate how lavish he was of time and trouble in the interests of native races, to say nothing of his ready and generous financial help.

The chief characteristic of our President which struck all who met him and have written about him was his high sense of public duty. This was shown in every department of his life.

Some mention should be made of other public work with which Sir Fowell was closely connected. For more than half a century he was a VicePresident of the Church Missionary Society and for nine years its Treasurer,

The resolution of that Society passed on his death recalls the fact that his father was Henry Venn's ally in many schemes for the regeneration of Africa, and that Sir Fowell was a personal friend and often the hospitable host of very many engaged in efforts for the good of Africa, both in London and at his residences in Essex and Norfolk. He had also been for many years Chairman of The Mission to Seamen. Sir Fowell Buxton made one of the most gracious of hosts. His social interests were largely developed and his large family circle claimed and received a large portion of his time and thought. Native visitors to this country were not infrequently his guests, such as the Alake of Abeokuta and other West African chiefs, King Khama, and others, and the well-known American negro leader whose death has just been chronicled, Booker Washington.

Reference must be made to Sir Fowell's family relations. His wife, Lady Victoria Buxton, has been a warm sympathizer in all her husband's interests, a sympathy which has been given through many years of illhealth. Mr. T. F. Victor Buxton, who succeeds Sir Fowell in the title, is one who shares in a very large measure his father's ideals and interests. He has been specially associated with the Church Missionary Society and with work for Africa, where he has travelled widely with Mrs. Buxton in Uganda and elsewhere. Mr. Noel Buxton, M.P., is a member of our Committee and his interest in the cause for which the Society stands is well-known. The other sons of Sir Fowell are Mr. Charles Roden Buxton, Mr. L. W. Buxton and the Rev. Harold Buxton. Mr. Leland Buxton has quite recently become a member of the African Native Affairs Society in Cape Town, where he resides.

The funeral took place at Overstrand Church, Cromer, on October 30. Our Society was to have been represented by its Vice-Chairman and Secretary as well as by Mr. Henry Gurney, but owing to a heavy fog in London Mr. F. W. Fox and Mr. Travers Buxton were unable to travel down to Cromer in time. The following resolution was passed by the Committee at the meeting following on the death of the President :

"The Committee of the Society has learned with deep sorrow of the death of its President, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, which will be felt as a heavy loss by every member.

Sir Fowell has always been a whole-hearted supporter of the cause of Native Races for which the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Societies have stood. He became connected with the Anti-Slavery Society first as a member of its Committee in 1883, and afterwards as Vice-President. In 1899, on his return from South Australia where he served a term of office as Governor, Sir Fowell was offered and accepted the Presidency of that Society on the death of Mr. Arthur Pease, M.P.

"Since then he has maintained the closest interest in the Society's work, being most regular in his attendance at the monthly Committee

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meetings, and sparing neither time nor trouble in consideration of the matters which have come before them. His wise and cautious judgment in presiding over the Committee meetings has been especially valuable in the handling of the important questions which have occupied the Committee since the amalgamation of the two Societies in 1909, and his gracious presence and influence at all gatherings of the Society will be greatly missed. Sir Fowell has also been a generous supporter of the Society's funds.

"The Committee begs to express to Lady Victoria Buxton and the family, its deep sympathy with them in their great sorrow.”

OTHER SOCIETIES.

WE have received the following resolution passed by the Consultative and Finance Committee of the London Missionary Society (and subsequently confirmed by the Board), at a meeting at which warm appreciation was expressed of the splendid service which Sir T. F. Buxton had rendered to the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, and the great loss which the native races throughout the world have sustained through his death.

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That the Directors of the London Missionary Society convey to the family of the late Sir Thos. Fowell Buxton, and also the Committee of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, their sincere sympathy in the loss which they have sustained in the death of one who has through so many years been their distinguished head.

"The Directors recall the unique outstanding service which the late Sir T. F. Buxton constantly rendered to the cause of Christian progress and righteousness throughout the world, his wide sympathy and his unwearying devotion, and they commend those who are so closely affected by h s death to the comfort and blessing of God.

"

(Signed) F. H. HAWKINS,

From the Friends' Anti-Slavery Committee.

"Foreign Secretary,

"L.M.S."

"We desire to express our deep sympathy with the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society in the death of the President of the Society, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. We are thankful for his long and active service in the cause of the native races and realize the great loss which it has sustained.

"(Signed) RICHARD H. SMITH,
"Secretary."

The Swiss League for the Defence of Natives has also sent a message of sympathy from Geneva.

PRESS NOTICES.

WE append a few extracts from the accounts which have appeared in the Press of our late President's career, giving in full that contributed to The Times of November 4, by " a correspondent," as it bears the marks of having

been written by one very intimately associated with the subject of it, both in public and private life :—

The death of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton at Cromer was an appropriate ending to his disinterested life. Those who knew him best will realize how fitting it was that his life should end in a small house, hardly more than a cottage, while wounded soldiers enjoyed the comfort of his own comfortable home near by. Though every luxury could have been his, he always tried to evade such things for himself, though lavishing them on others. He lived his usual active life up to last August, and the illness to which he succumbed was practically the only one he ever knew.

"He loved simplicity, a small house, frugal fare. Till he was seventyeight he never took a taxi if he could use an omnibus, he never had a fire in his room, he disliked the sumptuous shooting lunch, preferring bread and cheese under a hedge. His doctor could not but smile when, in his recent illness, he complained of the luxuries with which he was surrounded, and deplored his need of a nurse when her services were so much needed elsewhere.

"Fowell Buxton's most marked quality, inherited, no doubt, from his father and grandfather, was his keen sense of public duty. This took the form, not of entire devotion to one or two causes, but of multifarious activities pursued with untiring energy. In old days he would come home to Warlies tired out with the long day of public or philanthropic work, followed by a whole evening's drill with his Volunteers in the Tower Ditch or the Drill Hall at Whitechapel, and then the long ride home from Waltham, when, as he used to say, it was often too dark to see his horses' ears,' and the floods were sometimes out on the roads.

"A good instance of his ready response to the call of public service occurred when he was invited to take up the Governorship of South Australia. He was not young, he had an invalid wife and a large number of family claims. He had work of many kinds, including much county work both in Essex and Norfolk, and life had by this time run into more or less regular grooves. It was no light thing to transplant himself suddenly to the Antipodes, and he could not have been blamed for refusing the call. But, once his mind made up as to the obligation, his path was clear as daylight.

"So also in his long and uninterrupted services for the natives of Africa, the cause bequeathed to him by his father and grandfather. It is largely to his initiative that we owe the development of East Equatorial Africa on lines so much less open to criticism than those too often employed elsewhere. He was immensely tickled when Cecil Rhodes told him that on his refusal to accept a seat on the original board of the British South Africa Company the gap had to be filled by two dukes.'

"With his brother, Edward North Buxton, he joined the Commons Preservation Society in its early days, mainly with a view to stopping the Epping Forest enclosures. The working people of North and East London who pour down in their thousands every week to Chingford or Loughton do not realize the debt they owe to these two country gentlemen, who doggedly stuck to their guns amid the resentment of their landlord neighbours, contested the rights of the commoners through all the Courts up to the House of Lords, won their case, and ultimately secured to the public in perpetuity the enjoyment of the famous Forest. They supplemented their efforts by themselves presenting more than one piece of forest land to the public, and they took the occasion of their golden weddings (which occurred within a few months of each other) to celebrate the event by a joint gift of several hundred pounds to the Commons Preservation Society.

"Among his neighbours and friends,' as he loved to call all those with whom he anywhere came into contact, he will above all be remembered for his unceasing kindliness and thought for others by those little unremembered acts' which in his case were an instinctive part of ordinary life. Happy recollections centre round winter days on the ice at Warlies, when his ponds were always thrown open to the public, with the result that his own expert skating was often rudely interrupted by the crowds of skaters from the town. The gamekeeper was sternly forbidden to turn holiday-makers out of his woods and prevent their picking his primroses. He would call the trippers on the green at Warlies down into the park or garden, delighting to welcome them to all he had to give. Up to the last he never passed a tired woman or child on the road without stopping his carriage to give them a lift.

"Sport of all sorts appealed to him strongly. Unwilling in College days to indulge himself with a horse of his own, he would follow the hounds on a certain hard-mouthed cab-horse and come in, as an old friend described, with his gloves torn to ribbons. He was a familiar figure on horseback, whether on the hills he loved in Norfolk, in Epping Forest, or Rotten Row. He was all his lifetime devoted to riding, and in a lesser degree to shooting. His chief delight in recent years was shooting with his grandsons, and it is thought that his persistence in riding even after two serious falls, when he was over seventy-five, contributed to the illness to which he succumbed.

Simple in character, devoid of self-consciousness, with the courtly manners and kindly attentiveness of the older generation, he was one of the few people of whom it can be said that they never disliked any one and were never disliked by any one. He combined these winning characteristics with a strong religious faith which never wavered, an almost Puritanical sternness in everything that concerned his own personal convenience and comfort, and a ceaseless activity which harmonized well with

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