No private calamity which has occurred for years has so startled the mind of England as the withdrawal of Lord George Bentinck from the scene of his useful labours. In the prime of life, in the full possession of a vigorous and masculine intellect, at the head of a large and increasing political party, who revered him for his unsullied honour, and loved him for his undaunted courage, he has been taken from us by one of those mysterious visitations which are sent as a token that the destinies of the world are indeed in the hands of God. Short as was his public career, he had won for himself a name which will not lightly die away in the history of his country, and his memory will be cherished among us as that of a man who had the welfare of Britain thoroughly at heart; and who, in an age of degenerate and vacillating statesmanship, had the firmness to tear off the mask from the features of hypocrisy, and to expose the awful consequences of that culpable race for power which has effected the partial disorganisation of this great and once prosperous empire. The loss of such a man at such a time is indeed far more a public than a private calamity. As such, it has been felt throughout the realm by thousands who understood the true position of Bentinck as the champion of native industry, and the utter uncompromising foe of that selfish and sordid system which seeks to aggrandise the few at the cost of the labouring many. A large proportion even of those who originally yielded to the deleterious doctrines of the free-traders, but who, through sad and wholesome experience, had become alive to the folly and iniquity of the modern scheme, were gathering confidence from his unremitting exertions, and preparing to rank themselves by his side. In him the British colonies have lost their firmest friend and advocate. The noble struggle which he made this year in behalf of the oppressed and defrauded West Indian planters, was, in the opinion of many who knew him well, the proximate cause of his death; for a similar amount of physical and intellectual labour has hardly ever been undertaken even by a professional man, and never without the imminent risk of shattering the constitution.