The Sun.
London, England, 1848-09-23 00:00:00

DEATH OF
LORD GEORGE BENTINCIi

We published yesterday the melancholy intelligence of the
sudden death of the above respected Nobleman. We regret
to state that last evening aocounts were relkived by the Mar-
quis of Titchfield, aVistcourt House, corroborating the com-
munication, though nhe Trecise particulars of the melancholy
event were not mentioned. It appears his Lordship left
Welbeck Abbey on Thursday afternoon, en -flcot, witti the
intention of walking to Thoresty Park, the seaC of Earl
Manvari, about five stiles distant from Welbeck, his Lord-
ship having engaged to dine with the Noble Earl. Not
arriving at the hour he was expected, search was made for
him in the neighbourhood, and about nine o'clock in the
evening the lamented deceased was found, by his own ser-
vant, quite dead in a field through which his path to
Thoresby lay. The Noble Lord's friends are said to have
lately observed a marked change in his appearance, and
some anxiety has in consequence been felt on his behalf.
What the immediate cause of his Lordship's decease may
have been is of coure at present uncertain, but from the ab-
sence of any apoplectic tendency there seems great probabi •
lity that it may have arisen from disease of the heart.

We have received the following corroborative particulars
from the vicinity of the spot where the lamentable catas-
rophe occurred : _ _

SHEFFIELD, FRIDAY MORNING.
Lord George Bentinck was last night, at eleven o'clock.
found aead in a field near Welbeck Abbey, the seat 9f his
father the Duke of Portland. I gathered my information
this morning at the Crown Inn, totherham, and I have as-
certained beyond doubt that it is correct. I should have gone
over to Welbeck to make farther inquiries, but the distance
is too great to admit of my returning this afternoon. While
at the Crown Inn, which is the head inn at Nottingham, I
galihered the following particulars from several individuals
• separately, and their accounts entirely agreed. They say that
a stable-man from Welbeck Abbey arrived at the Crown
Inn, that morning, with a horse and gig, in time for the four
A.M. down train to the north. He said he
was going to Edinburgh to inform Lord Henry
Bentinck (who is out shooting in Scotland) of the
sudden death of his elder brother, Lord George Ben-
tinck. The statement he made was—that yesterday after-
noon, Lord George Bentinek, having an appointment to dine
at Thoresby Park, the seat of Earl Manvers, and being a
good pedestrian, set out on foot from Welbeck Abbey, in-
tending to walk across the fields to Thoresby Park, a dis-
tance of five or six miles. A man servant was at the time
dispatched with a horse and gig to take thither a change of
dress, &c., for his Lordship. Lord George did not arrive at
Thoresby Park at the appointed time, whereupon inquiries
were. made of the servant as to the clime of the delay. He
said in reply, that before he left Welbeck he saw his Lord-
ship crossing the park, and afterwards, as he was driving
along the road, he observed him walking on in a field situate
about three miles on the road. Time rolled on, and as his
Lordship did not arrive, the servant drove back to Welbeck
to ascertain whether he
.yad returned thither; but finding
that such was not the cadge he again drove back to Thoresby
Park, thinking that Id George might by that time have
arrived. Nothing, how -Mr, had been seen of him, and conse-
quently several servants were dispatched in various direc-
tions for his Lordship. His Lordship's own servant pro-
ceeded etong the footpath to Welbeck, and after walking
Soma diNance lie saw, on approaching a gate, a human body
stretched on the ground. Oh going close up to the object he
discovered that it was the body of his master, Lord George
Bentinck. Life was quite extinct. Soon afterwards the
body was removed to Welbeck in a drag, and the servant
who found the body was immediately dispatched with a
horse and gig to Rotherham, to take the train at Masborough,
for the north, as already mentioned. Before leaving Bother-
ham'he ordered- post-horses to be in readiness to-night to
take forward to Welkseck Abbey. Lord Henry Bentinck, in
caseate should, erriVe by train this evening.
The following brief note from Manchester will show how
deeply this melancholy event is felt in that important city:—
" The grOafeat possible excitement prevails in this city in
consequence of the rumoured death of this distinguished
Nobleman, but which it is hoped will turn out not to be
founded on fact.
The report is, that the Noble Lord was to have dined
last evening with Earl Maavers, at Holme Pieerepont, Not-
tinghamshire, and that as his Lordship (lid not arrive in
time; a messenger was At )(ached to Welbeck Abbey to in-
quire the cause. The messenger, it. is said, found the Noble
Lord dead in a field through which 'a
footpath passes from
one mansion to the other."
(From the Tinees.)
A remarkable man, who not yet three years ago suddenly
entered the political world, has been still more suddenly
withdrawn. Lord George Bentinck is gone. Of all the
public diameters of. the day there was no one of whom we
less thought to hear this melancholy announcement. Young,
energetic, eonfide.nt, hopeful, persevering, full of indigna-
tion,. opening new quarrels, and provoking new antagonists
every day, his Lordship was commencing, so it seemed, a
long and vigorous career. About a year since he made an
attempt to retire from his new and uncongenial position.
He summoned his party, and urged them to elect another
chief. The offer only brought out the nakedness of the land
and theleepelessness of the cause. Whether for a principle
or a man the search was equally unsuccessful. With cha-
racteristic chis;:alry his Lordship resumed his desperate post,
and has ever time worked it with an energy that might
}a aye raised a soul under the ribs of death. Under
the ribs of protection, however, he has worked in
vain.. There is too much reason to fear that three sessions
of overwhelming toil have worn and torn the fibre
that promised otherwise a green old age. The man
whose heart was with huntsman and hound, the racer
and the starting-post, under some strong and almost
unaccoustable impulse devoted himself for three years to
days. of calculation and nights of debate, to the study of
blue books, to the investigation of arithmetical errors and
moral inconsistencies. For three years he sustains the un-
equal strife, and then sinks in a moment as he treads the
springy turf and breathes the balmy 'air of his first boyish
'wants on- his father's domain. We would not willingly
trespass either on thin ,rernt purposes of Providence or on
the secret releases of individual character. But there was
an almost superstitious element in his L ,rdship's mind,
which, as it prompted him to take a providential view of
public Waive, lends a peculiar light to his own extraordi-
nary career. Men are sometimes called instruments in the
hands of Heaven, and are said to be raised up, employed, and
laid aside. Whatever the purpose, no instance suggests
atose ideas so much as Lord George's three years of party
reign. Taken from the turf and placed suddenly in the
senate, pressist inbia a service alien from his nature and pur-
suits, performing juot one mission, failing of this purpose, yet
insideetally effecting objects far beyond his thought,
atfl then removed at the very moment when the
situation which first invoked bins appears to be
pa-sing away, it is not easy to class him with
the common race of politicians. Even at the outset of
his career every one was struck with its singularity. That
he should sustain it, and that so much should turn on his
individu d etrorts, seemed still more wonderful. The con-
clusion is now the strangest feature, as it is also the most
melancholy incident of the whole. But what has Lord
George Bentinck done? and what has he not done? He
has not carried one point of his avowed crusade. He has
not saved one iota of agricultural protection, and what is
more the results have hitherto -belied his moat confident
predictions. lie has not had better success in the more
-es difficult aed complex ground of commercial and colonial
protection. He has not made an effectual resistance to the
liberal and progressive tendencies of the country. He has
Tint carried any of his specific plans. It would be difficult
to say what he has done, or even proposed, that would en-
title him to a place in the lowest rank of statesmen. Yet,
ns the chief of ii party, hastily gathered
..by his energy,
hie boldness, his Isncomproinising spirit, and reckless
determination, he has done what no atatesman could
or even ' would its,. By heading and maintaining an
obstinate secession flom the Conservative party, he has
placed th,p .fountry; now for two years, under a Li-
beral policy. "He has made the Whig Premier. We
have often• expressed our conviction, and we now repeat
it, that in no other way could we have met the present great
crisis in the world's hastery. We little know What our pre-
sent caeoaerata!-(1 have been with a Conservative Ministry and
a Whig (i.4i'osition 'lat. March. "Every month brings out
the v:ilut of Precent Situation. To Lord Gaorsep Bentinck
more thanany' other man we owe this barepy rese. This is
not tlie only thing Lord George Bentinck has done, nor is it
his most meritorious achiestealint. Full of the memory and
the wrongs of his Jima faiehd and !neater, he cherished for
tiy, illy years a deep fund of vengeance eshich time and op-
prirtunity at last brought out. flaunted by the ghost of
Cenning, he has at length exac:ed terrible reprisals from
those who first baffled, then burrowed, the policy of that
statesman. After a long interval, a similar occasion and, as
Lora G. Bentinck thought, a similar inconsistency, occurred.
It was an accident rather than a result of character or of
political creed that Lord George Bentinck took up the
unreel of the Protectionists. To punish inconsistency, to
ellidicate pledges, to save partisans from the disgrace of
wholesale and compulsory conversion, and make the convert
safer tile penalties of change, were the objects he had most
mt, heart, and in those lie succeeded. It is as a political
eneralise not as a statesman, that Lord George Bentinck has
succeeded. I.le-i has been the rod of faction. Ile has pu-
nisated both the party and the man. He has done some other
thni With a peculiar taste for investigation, and a gene-
ral rfs,i4cion cf trickery, he has made numerous attacks on
the 1,4)11'T-frauds, if such there be, of modern statesinanship.
Fat figures, got up cases, twisted chronology, convenient
suppressions, were the objects of his rigorous scrutiny and
relentless denunciation. He has made some successful
exposures. But we would rather place his suc-
CCM in the vigilance he has roused, and the
terror e, ith which he has surrounded official dis-
honesties as long as his name shall he remembered.
As the political results of Lord George Bentinck's career
have been exclusively negative, it is almost needless, and is
Certainly premature, to inquire into the probable conse-
splmees of his death. While his Lordship has been dividing
t e Conservatives, there has been an increasing unanimity
'the House in favour of liberal measures. The political
aierld now presents a very different distribution ot parties
frZni. that whiek the repeal of the corn-laws broke up. Could
'we suppose that. Eord George's followers would take this op-
portuni,y of making up their quarrel with their old leader,
they would have to take him, not only without pledges, but
without even a distinctive cause. That they should wish to
be * party, and, if possible, a successful one, is likely enough.
laer.et, in the present state of politics Lord George Bentinck's
friends will find it difficult either to accomplish, or even to
Issow the object of their, ambition. Time, however, will soon
a mitt thershcoen:,eir,tintroduce new dramas, and re-arrange the
'parts.
Netilin has dropped on Protection.
no more. Its hero is
ruoralitiee assertedg
ruincr remains but friendship avenged,
moat peremptorily eeseuscacianstelency, or renunciation of office,
event
the Chronicle.)
The melancholy
paper
ye
tent which we announced s erday will have awakenedinbu
'Sinn of our at
onehat seedni
_-
timant ot sincere and deefiredgeraeth in the minds of all classes
of our readers. The suddenidineand tl of an eminent public man
flower of his days, andin;the
—cut off in the very
midst of a career at whose goal the sanguine hopes of friends
ghostn erizes of an honourable
and admirers had placed tehireeuli
ran occurrence that
assbitiin—is, under any
oral sympathies
appeals too impressively to the elementB;snyatmu
f rally excited by
to admit of other emotions than those
human Ilk and
We can most
a mourrful exaTple of the uncertainty o
truly
gyinlscs.ncol. human expe.ctati(ms.
rivilit.,ilcase of the untimely removal of LordG
Vith,fthAS,
Vl/0,0411dg-114N is much to. enhance those regretful fe:lcinrg:
tiehich itiOnttittteditsiv arise in every well-constituted mind, oiss
' *ttile.S.stn'Ostysiipi an instance ot the frail tenure on which
I,* all d blessings are held. While it would be
atratistsetare eavour to seem forgetful that the
\ • cr aibbl ' ave faults, it needs but the most ordi-
e4„.„,,_
Wets knowledge that he had many excellent,
id soli' di sit le qualities; and we are persuaded that
,t.os- wickets' dissented from the opinions with
whi .tt e identified himself, those who were most
strong y convinced of the injurious tendencies of the policy
of which his name had become the symbol, and even those
Who nest emphatically disapproved of certain objectionable
peculiarities in his pub demeanour, will nut be the last to
appreciate the talents an virtues which gave him moils than
one valid claim to the respect and good will of his country-