thumb|right|200px|As painted by [[George Hayter in 1833.]]
Henry Warburton (12 November 1784 – 16 September 1858) was an English merchant and politician, and also an enthusiastic amateur scientist.
Elected as Member of Parliament for Bridport, Dorset, in the 1826 general election, he held the seat for 15 years until his resignation from the House of Commons in 1841. He was returned to the Commons at a by-election in November 1843, for Kendal, but did not seek re-election in 1847.
On Parliament he was active in the reform of bankruptcy, the repeal of stamp duty on newspapers, introduction of the penny post and in the campaigns of the Anti-Corn Law League.
Early life
The son of John Warburton of Eltham, Kent, a timber merchant, he was educated at Eton College, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was admitted 24 June 1802, aged 18. He was in the first class of the college examinations as freshman in 1803, and as junior soph in 1804. He was admitted scholar on 13 April 1804, graduated B.A. (being twelfth wrangler and placed next to Ralph Bernal) in 1806, and proceeded M.A. in 1812. George Pryme knew him in his undergraduate days, and both Bernal and Pryme were later his colleagues in politics.
For some years after leaving the university Warburton was engaged in the timber trade at Lambeth, but his taste for science and politics ultimately led to his abandoning commercial life.
His early interest was in mineralogy and geology and in 1808 he was elected as an early member of the Geological Society (founded 1807), serving as Secretary 1814–1816 and Vice-President 1816–1824. Warburton was one of the key contributors the Society's project for a geological map of England and Wales, published in 1820, providing facts from his field excursions and a significant share of the funding to underwrite the cost of its production. In 1824 Warburton was a key figure in the successful submission by the Geological Society for a Royal Charter, and, in 1825, was one the first to be nominated a Fellow of the Society.
He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society on 16 February 1809. William Hyde Wollaston was his closest friend, and in the autumn of 1818 they made a tour together on the continent. When Michael Faraday desired to become F.R.S., Warburton felt objections to his election, thinking that he had in one matter treated Wollaston unfairly. Correspondence ensued, and these objections were dispelled.