Fowell Buxton

I am no politician.

How wonderful are the ways of the Lord (God); how sweet his mercies, how terrible his judgements!

There are a great many poor people who are very sick, and yet have no money to buy food, or clothes, or physic; and there are many more so ignorant that they never heard of the Bible, and think they do very right, when they roast and eat their enemies!

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet Buxton of Belfield and Runton (1 April 1786– 19 February 1845) was an English Member of Parliament, brewer, abolitionist and social reformer.

Quotes

Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (1849)

• The longer I live the more certain I am that the great difference between men, the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy and invincible determination – a purpose once fixed and then death or victory. That quality will do anything that can be done in this world, and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged creature a man without it.
  • Quoted in Benjamin West, his life and work, p. 20, also quote on the title page of Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, p. 1

• I shall speak as well as I can for usefulness, but not for fame.
  • Letter to a friend, 24 February 1825, quoted in Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, p. 152.

• I should very much like to be a country gentleman. I would not have the best horses, or dogs, or farms, in the county; but I would exert myself to improve the people who were under my influence.
  • Letter to A Clergyman, Cromer Hall, 22 August 1826, quoted in Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, p. 152.

• No man has a surplus of power: meaning by power— time, talents, money, influence.
  • Letter to A Clergyman, Cromer Hall, 22 August 1826, quoted in Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, p. 154.

• I am no politician.
  • Letter to Charles Simeon from Cambridge, 14 January 1820, quoted in Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, p. 84-85.

• How wonderful are the ways of the Lord (God); how sweet his mercies, how terrible his judgements!
  • 16 April 1820, quoted in Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Chapter 7, p. 86

• No longer from Parliament with an easy mind, so we must be satisfied.
  • 17 January 1821, quoted in Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Chapter 7, p. 89

• There are a great many poor people who are very sick, and yet have no money to buy food, or clothes, or physic; and there are many more so ignorant that they never heard of the Bible, and think they do very right, when they roast and eat their enemies!
  • 28 January 1821, Letter to one of his little boys, quoted in Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Chapter 7, p. 92

• In this world I shall never be anything but a mere moderate– behind the foremost, and before the last.
  • 15 March 1821, quoted in Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Chapter 7, p. 94

External links

• Charles Buxton: Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Third Edition, London, 1849
• Jackson, Henry E. (Henry Ezekiel, 1869-1939; Van Dyke, Henry (1852-1933): Benjamin West, his life and work, Philadelphia : The J.C. Winston Co., 1900