The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette. — 1858-09-28 (Dorchester, Dorset, England)

THE LATE MR. HENRY WARBURTON, F. R. S.— togromworreck:ihpetaline at a charge of plreencotmopann the 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 Warburton was the son of a merchant of the city of Lonsoon 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 entered 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. Warburton 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 persevering 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 Compromised; " generally, Mr. Warburton, in a singular petition, prayed to be examined, revealing, in his statement to the House, the gross costs and corruptions 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. Warburton 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 dissolution 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."