As a young officer Suttie owed his advancement to his cousin John, Earl of Stair, but after attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel ‘he left the service in disgust with the Duke of Cumberland’.
He was held to be a great officer because he had a way of thinking of his own, and had learned from his kinsman Marshal Stair, to draw the plan of a campaign. He was held to be a great patriot, because he wore a coarse coat and unpowdered hair, while he was looking for a post with the utmost anxiety. He was reckoned a man of much sense because he said so himself, and had such an embarrassed, stuttering elocution that one was not sure but it was true. He was understood to be a great improver of land, because he was always talking of farming ... For all those qualities he got credit for some time; but nobody ever mentioned the real strength of his character, which was that of an uncommonly kind and indulgent brother to a large family of brothers and sisters, whom he allowed during his absence in a five years’ war to dilapidate his estate and leave him less than half his income.
Encouraged by the Lord President, Robert Dundas (married to his wife’s sister), he offered himself in 1768 as candidate for Haddingtonshire in opposition to the Dalrymple interest, and was returned. Although Sir Hew asserted, ‘Sir George Suttie does not come in for the pleasure of hearing the debates, expectation of office is probably his view’,
At the general election of 1774 he concluded an agreement with William Hamilton Nisbet to share the Parliament between them. Suttie supported Administration over the American war; spoke, 30 Oct. 1775, in defence of North’s bill to call out the militia; but on the question of conciliation with America, 7 Nov. 1775, bluntly ‘called upon the ministers to inform the House whether they had any plan ... of what they intended to do’.
Suttie died 25 Nov. 1783.