THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1907. A SINGULAR APPEAL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8994, 2 December 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1907. A SINGULAR APPEAL.

It is remarkable that an appeal should be made to this far-away doi minion for funds for the purchase of an historical building in England in order to preserve it to the nation. / "Battersea Rise House," near Clapham Co union, was for many years the residence of the great emancipator of the slave-William Wilberforce. It was in the library of that house that the regular meetings of the Anti-Slavery Committee were held, and in which for twenty years' the committee, with Wilberforce as its leader, carried on that campaign for the abolition of slavery, which will ever have a foremost place in the philanthropic history of the British Empire. The circular which has been sent out to this dominion appealing for funds for the purchase of the estate on which the house stands, j states that '.'unless voluntary contributions of £B,OOO be speedily forthcoming this unique memorial of a movement which did so much for humanity will be swept away." It is hardly creditable to the people of England—it is almost inconceivable —that there shouid be the remotest danger of such a thing occurring, even were the sum required ten times the amount asked, or that those who are exerting themselves in this matter should find it necessary to appeal to the most distant speck of pjpulated territory in the Southern Hemisphere for a small sum of money to preserve the relics of the leader in Great Britain of one of the most beneficient movements in modern history.