The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1858-09-28 00:00:00

BRIDPORT.

BRIDPOPT RAILWAY COMPANY.—The seventh
half-yearly ordinary general meeting of the proprie-
tors of this company will be held on Tuesday (this
day) at the company's offices. The Great Western
Company have accepted the terms offered by the
Bridports2
THE LATE MR. HENRY WARBURTON, F. R. S.—
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The death of Mr. Warburton on Thursday week,
in Cadogan-place, in the 74th year of his age, is
another loss of an eminent and useful public man of
our times—of a class of older men which will be
War-
burton was the son of a merchant of the city of Lon-
soon chronicled as a bygone generation. Mr.
don, and was formerly himself a Baltic merchant,
largely engaged in the timber trade. Natural talent
induced his parent to spare no cost in the education
of a promising son. Henry Warburton was AM
Etonian. He left Eton late, entering Trinity College,
Cambridge. Excelling in mathematics, as well as in
classics, he became a !gaoler and a wrangler. He en-
tered the House of Commons, in 1826, as one of the
members for Bridport, almost an unknown man. The
late James Mill, father of Mr. John Mill, was his
chief political instructor. With David Ricardo, C. P.
Thompson (Lord Sydenham), Mr. Hyde Villiers, the
elder deceased brother of Lord Clarendon, Mr. War-
burton usually acted when first in Parliament. He
immediately attached himself to the small minority
voting in Mr. Home's early divisions, Lord Althorp
I and Sir Henry Parnell supporting the same phalanx
lof Reformers Mr. Warburton's first Parliamentary
essay was the prosecution of a reform of the Royal
College of Surgeons. He was persistent and per-
severing in his endeavouring to " open "the body of
that corporation and to reform its abuses. The
' following year, widening his object, he obtained a
select committee on the laws affecting anatomical
studies in particular. Popular prejudice was much
excited, and for three years remedial legislation was
I obstructed. But though failing in his Bill of 1828 to,
legalize and regulate the supply of subjects for our
schools of anatomy—the Bill passing the Commons,
1 but being rejected by the Lords—Mr. Warburton in
1831 eventually suoceeded in passing a most useful
Act. He always said that Ultra-Radicals and the
ignorant pauper members were his real opponents.
The late Mr. Henry Hunt in particular used to
describe Mr. Warburton as • man monster. Mr.
Warburton continued to represent Bridport in seven
successive Parliaments. His last return was in 1841,
when after a close and corrupt contest he was at the
head of the poll. But a petition being presented
against both the sitting members he surrendered his
seat, accepting the Chiltern Hundreds. An inquiry
following in • select committee on "Corrupt Com-
promised; " generally, Mr. Warburton, in a singular
petition, prayed to be examined, revealing, in his
statement to the House, the gross costs and corrup-
tions of all his six successive returns for Bridport
This unprecedented course in a representative
occasioned much severe comment at the time, and
Conservatives chuckled at the strange exhibition of
a public man thus exposing himself. But Mr. War-
burton notwithstanding the remonstrances of friends
persisted in giving evidence, by himself and his
agents, of the corruption of the freemen electors.
Certainly the cause of purity of election gained, if
the Purist lost credit. He, of course, never regained
his old seat Years before Mr. Warburton had
built, in Bridport, a Mechanic's Institution, at a
cost, we believe, of £4,000. After his political
suicide at Bridport Mr. Warburton remained out of
Parliament from the spring of 1841 till November,
1843. On the death of Mr. George William Wood,
the member for Kendal, the constituency of that
borough in pnblio meeting selected Mr. Warburton
as the most fitting of a dozen public men presented.
for their choice. We believe he was unknown to a
single elector. He represented Kendal till the dis-
solution of July, 1847, when he was succeeded by
Mr. Glyn, the present member. Mr. Warburton
voluntarily retired from public life at that time,
billing his friends that he was advaneed in years;
and that all the greater political questions of his gene •
ration being concluded and suocessfully carried, his
ambition was satiated, and that if he continued
longer in Parliament he should be "a fish out of
water."