The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-23 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, OCT. 23, 1869.

Another great popular statesman has disappeared.
At seven o'clock this morning the ex-Premier,
Lord DERBY, after nearly a week's unconsciousness,
breathed his last at his ancestral estate of Knowsley
Park, in Lancashire. Born on the 29th of March,
1799, and dying on the 23rd of October, 1869, the
noble lord had exceeded by nearly seven months the
allotted age of man—the three score years and ten of
Holy Writ.. Deeply though he is regretted, now
that he has passed away in the course of nature,
it cannot possibly be said, therefore, that he has
died prematurely. lie had not, it is true, even,
as one may say, by a single day survived h:s
reputation. But he had survived many of those rare
powers for which in his prime he was so very re-
markable. The greatest debater in an age of great
debaters, he spoke at last with the feebleness of a very
old man, with an indistinct voice, and with an evident
difficulty of articulation. As an orator, he was gone,
his day was over. When we listened' to his last
speech in the House of Lords during the late session,
we felt convinced that he was perfectly conscious of
this himself. It cannot but be remembered, in-
deed, that in that address of his in obe-
dience to the dictates of a manifest presentiment,
he in a manner formally and certainly very patheti-
cally took leave of public life. His decadence,
however, was far more physical than intellec-
tual. The genius of the man was still lambent and
glowing until this last illness, by which he was mor-
tally stricken and utterly prostrated. During the
fifty years of his public life, he has played a conspicu-
ous part in the history of his country, and this, too,
not only in the arena of Parliament, but in the fields
of Literature. In his hot youth so stinging was his
powers, that the most formidable orator of his time,
O'CONNELL, the Tribune of the People and the Libe-
rator of Ireland, dubbed him—" Scorpion STANLEY."
So chivalrous was he in his temperament, that the
Poet of KING ARTHUR accorded to him in the midst
even of his satire of the New Timon—the splendid
designation of " The Rupert of Debate." That title
accorded to hitn some twenty years ago, by Lord
LYTTON, has ever since then been confirmed as his
by popular acclamation. It will be, especially as
the " Rupert of Debate," that the Fourteenth Earl
of DERBY will be held in the national remembrance.
He was three times Prime Minister of England. He
was a ripe scholar, as well as a brilliant orator and
the sagacious Leader of a great Political Party. For
nearly a quarter of a century he was the undisputed
chief of those who formerly called themselves Tories,
more recently Conservatives, and last of all Consti-
tutionalists. Loving the sports of the field when he
was younger—a notability upon the turf during the
middle period of his public career —Lord DERBY
consented to do at last, what even Lord GEORGE
BENTINCK did not hesitate to do, in obedience to the
exigencies of political life, namely, to withdraw
altogether from his favourite pursuit, to sell his
stud of racehorses and to close his betting-book
abruptly and permanently. Like LORD GEORGE
he never won that great race—" the blue ribbon
of the turf," as Mr. DISRAELI must long since almost
have repented of having called it, the phrase has
become so hackneyed by repetition—the very name
of which seems like an echo of his own—the
DERBY ! Once, and that too when he was Premier,
he all but won it—with Toxopholite. Thriu he won
the blue ribbon of Politics however, and once that of
Literature. The former, by becoming, as we have
said, thrice First Lord of the Treasury. The latter,
by assuming high rank among the translators of
flomEr. by right of his splendid English version of
the Iliad. Successful in those and other respects,
Lord DERBY was fortunate at the last in leaving a
son and heir to succeed to his title and his fortunes,
who is so far not unworthy his fame, that upon his
assuming, as he does now, his position as Fifteenth
Earl of DERBY, he has already established for himself
a statesman's reputation.

IT is to be hoped that the Home Secretary will
profit by the example of Sir EARDLEY CULLING
EARDLEY. This individual—the fourth of a line of
baronets, which has for its motto sees, decus, et robur—

The very extensive Distillery now being erected
at Belfast, with all recent improvements for the manufacture of
Irish whisky, by Messrs. DUNVILLE & Co., who have gained
a world-wide celebrity for their fine old Irish whisky, is to be
called "The Royal Irish Distillery."