The Right Hon. John Arthur Roebuck died on Sunday morning
last, at the age of 78, apparently from the effects of a cold, caught after dining with the Benchers of the Temple on the previous Tuesday, though the final cause of death appears to have been some failure of the action of the heart. He was originally a Benthamite Radical, but had become during the last twenty years more or less of a Tory-Democrat, and rather more Tory than Democrat. In the House of Commons he held aloof from both parties, and always took a line of his own, though for many years back that line had been unfavourable to the Liberals, and agreeable to the Tories. He it was who turned out the Aberdeen Government for incompetence in the management of the Crimean campaign ; and since then he had, for the most part, assumed the aggressive position of the watch-dog of England, though in the earlier days of Lord Melbourne's Government he was wont to attack it for its meddling foreign policy. In relation to the Irish Established Church, also, he turned round, having attacked it as "the greatest enormity in Europe," in his earlier days, but defending it against Mr. Gladstone's attack in 1869. Mr. RoebUck, though not a consistent politician, was a pungent and vigorous speaker, and inflicted wounds on his adversaries which at one time brought upon him Mr. Disraeli's sneer at his "melo- dramatic malignity" and " Sadler's Wells sarcasm." But " melodramatic " was not truly descriptive of his manner. Mr. Roebuck was a political Ishmael, whose hand was against every man, but he was not an actor, nor, indeed, an artificially made-up figure of any kind. His political views were acrid and very capricious, but they were at least his own.
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