The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-24 00:00:00

THE SUN.
LONDON, MONDAY, JUNE 24, 1861.

The melancholy death of JOHN, first Baron
CAMPBELL, the Lord High Chancellor of Eng-
land, will excite but one feeling throughout the
country—that of profound regret for himself, and
towards the members of the noble and learned
lord's family, of most respectful commiseration.
The disappearance from amongst us of this emi-
nent statesman and jurisconsult, legislator and
administrator, has been so abrupt, so startling in
its suddenness, that it is more than usually diffi-
cult at once to realise the reality of his depar-
ture. Attending the Cabinet Council on Satur-
day afternoon, at the official residence of the
First Lord of the Treasury—entertaining a dinner
party of eighteen at his own residence on Satur-
day night—within a few hours afterwards Lord
CAMPBELL is found seated in his own bedroom,
with blood oozing from his mouth—Dead. Dying,
as he did, immediately after the exercise of his
public duties, the noble and learned lord may be
said, with perfect accuracy, to have died in har-
ness. To his inanimate remains the nation will
not, of course, fail to award the mournful
honours of a solemn and public interment. The
Lord High Chancellor of England, expiring while
in the exercise of that supreme responsibility,
-while keeper of the Great Seal and Guardian of
Her MAJESTY'S conscience, demands, as it were,
by right, by a sort of imperative necessity, some
such evidence of respect from the people, from
the Parliament, from the SOVEREIGN herself, and
it;is almost needless to add, in a very peculiar way,
from the deceased peer's colleagues in the councils
of her MAJESTY'S Government.

A funeral at Westminster Abbey, therefore, is
certain to attest now, in a few days, the national
estimation of the distinguished Lord Chancellor who
has been with such appalling abruptness snatched
from amongst us. Lord CAMPBELL was one of
those eminent men of whom the nation is—not un-
naturally or unreasonably, and in the noblest sense
of the word—proudest. A cadet, it is true, of the
great ducal house of ARGYLL, a member in fact of
that grand Clan of the CAMPBELLS, owning an
almost loyal allegiance to their fair-haired chieftain
the AI‘CaLLTIM MORE—JOHN CAMPBELL, after-
wards Sir JOHN CAMPBELL, eventually Ist Baron
CAMPBELL and England's Lord High Chancellor,
was son of the Rev. Dr, GEORGE CAMPBELL. who
was during upwards of half a. century consecutively
minister of Cupar. The deceased Chancellor was
consequently—was essentially—what is called aself-
made-man. He was one of those British Worthies
who with Heaven's good help have carved their
way to distinction. The members of our own
laborious and responsible profession, the members
of what is not inappositely or (considering the
influence indubitably exercised
by public
journalism) extravagantly designated the Fourth
Estate—more especially the Parliamentary
and legal reporters, and together with them the
theatrical critics upon the daily newspapers, will
ever remember with interest that the future Lord
Chief Justice of England, the future Lord Chan-
cellor of England, the future Historian of the Eng-
lish Lord Chief Justices and Lord Chancellors,
laboured in the early part of his career in those
particular capacities as a publicist ! That he
toiled, in fact, at intervals, by day and by night,
as a reporter, now in the stalls of one of
our Theatres-Royal, now at the short-hand writer's
table in the law courts, now in one of those
mysterious boxes confronting the throne in the
lords, immediately over the Speaker's Chair in the
Commons, the boxes of the Great National " Whis-
pering Gallery," known to fame as The Gallery!
Within the first decade of this century Lord CAMP-
BELL, then plain JOHN CAMPBELL, was engagedthus
off and on (while yet a junior barrister) as a re-
porter upon the staff of the Norriirig Chronicle.
The fact that he Was thus enrolled upon the staff
of that journal is as distinctly marked down in the
annals of its palmy days, as the other notable circum-
stance that in the fourth decade of this century
another famous writer, CHARLES
DICKENS, the
was first occupied u
Great Novelist, pon the London