without principle, or men of no talents with principle of implicit attachment to particular men."-" To forget all benefits, and to conceal the remembrance of all injuries, are maxims by which political men lose their honour but make their fortunes."-Neither Castlereagh nor Canning is named, Page 411.-" Partisans in Parliament, bigots in religion, tories in government-these are the men who thrive in all corrupted states, and by thriving accelerate the ruin of free constitutions."

The freeholders of Wiltshire want honest men, who will look only to the people's interest; not party mer. who never lose sight of their own. And it is highly to Mr. Methuen's honour that he has been found on both sides. Calne, May 31, 1818.

SIR,

NATH. ATHERTON.

To Titus Trueman.

HAVING derived amusement from many of your publica tions, and being anxious that your reputation should not be diminished, I am induced to be very inquisitive, and to ask many questions which I hope your deep erudition will enable you satisfactorily to answer. The first that naturally occurs is,Why have you not fulfilled your promise of proving Mr. Fisher's assertions to be true relative to our aspiring Candi date? Surely he has not so bad an opinion of the freeholders of Wilts as to call them sharks,-to have told Mr. F. that they were not to be trusted even to value a few loads of hay, &c.that, if referred to, they would not act honourably to an incoming tenant from a distant county ?-But, Mr. Titus, what is this I hear relative to another discarded tenant of this esteemed landlord ?-(They say, too, the fathers had been bosom friends.) Did he let land to a Mr. Powell, at Norton? Did he, when he let the farm to this very respectable tenant, give him to understand, that it consisted of thirty acres more than was really the case? Did it turn out that these thirty acres had been previously let? Did not these sworn friends part inimically respecting other agricultural matters, and terminate their alliance by a law-snit favourable to the tenant? Was not another tenant, of respectable connections in North Wilts, turned out of the same estate at a very short notice, without any apparent just cause? There are also some strange reports respecting tythe payments, one of which applies to the above-mentioned parish. They say Mr. Benett's father, or he himself, procured the living for the present incumbent. But for that reason has he withheld the tythes for six or seven years? Has he forbidden his tenant to pay tythes when the divine can prove them to have been paid for more than a een

tury? Until his conduct has been, by you, cleared as a landlord, no Wiltshire yeoman can, with credit, give Mr. Benett a vote; and, until his religious principles are better known, and his usage of that clergyman in particular ably vindicated, it will be a disgrace to any one of that body to enrol his name on Mr. B.'s poll-book. I may very shortly be more INQUISITIVE.

SIR,

To Mr. Titus Trueman.

I LOOK for you as regularly on Thursday morning, as I do for my breakfast, and never enjoy it with so much relish as when I have you before me; and dinner would be much more pleasant in prospect, were I certain of seeing you at table. I have left my name at the printing-office, and, if you should take our town in your travels, you shall find an open door, and a numerous circle to give you a hearty welcome, to the best my house or the town can afford. But, as I should be sorry if any difference of opinion should arise between us, you will oblige me and your friends here very much, by answering the following question, Do you mean, by the postscript in your letter to the freeholders last week, to inculcate an idea, that the religious tenets of a candidate for the representation of the county, is a subject with which the freeholders have no right to become acquainted, or to interfere -Your noticing this query in your next, would oblige your friends, and especially Your obedient servant,

·Devizes, May 29, 1818.

A CONSTANT READER.

MR. BENETT'S DINNER AT MARLBOROUGH. To the Freeholders of the County of Wilts. GENTLEMEN,

IN In my last address, I took the freedom to direct your at tention to an account of a dinner which the editors of the Salisbury Journal had inserted in their paper, and which they gave, as they had no doubt received it, from some one or other of "the (too) zealous friends of independence." In the true Devizes style, I certainly should not have "intruded" or "obtruded" myself again upon your notice upon this subject, as far as the mere circumstances of the meeting was concerned; the consideration of Mr. Benett's speech I pledged myself to, but something else has since transpired which again renders the account of that dinner party a matter of no sinall interest to you, especially as the period is fast approach

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ing when you will have to exercise the most important of all the rights you possess as the electors of this great county. I ought to premise, that I believe the "historian" did not actually see" what he records," for he did not arrive at the scene of action until the company had become motionless, and were only capable of recounting in the visions of the morning, the painful remembrance of "ecstatic" delights, departed never to return! To think that a host of agents, our sapient member, our spiral candidate, and even the chairman, worthy Fulwar's self, should have been so unmindful of their absent friend as to remove before his arrival, was too bad! much too bad! To be deprived of a bit and a drop, to find nothing but snoring inmates, and that too after a jour ney of twenty-seven miles, and during the season when the dewy exhalations of the morning enriched his auburn locks with their translucent drops, must have been "ecstatic joy!" His designs frustrated, his hopes disappointed-he notwithstanding possessed fortitude sufficient to engage in the du ties of his jaunt; "he cull'd what sweets old Marlbro' then could yield;" and returned fraught with the rich intelli gence, determined to strike dismay into the real friends of independence, by a display of what had been performed by "the zealous friends of independence," when met to cele brate the revival of its name, and the termination of its existence.

The excellence of history is its truth, and it must surely appear surprising to you, that the man who could so highly appreciate its value, when eulogising the labours of "the most celebrated historian of the age," should have discovered so little veneration for it, when, emulous to rival his patron, he took up the pen of the historian to record the auspi cious events of the Duke's Arms dinner! Had he recorded those events-had he given you in detail, or even in outline, a faithful narration-himself and his performance might have rested together until the next meeting of the independents had called into honourable action those latent energies, which to this hour have failed to excite our wonder, or conciliate our esteem. You will recollect, gentlemen, that this Apollo of the Salisbury press, under the name of The Old MoonRaker, felt himself called upon to remark on the report of a dinner at the Castle Inn among the friends of Mr. Wellesley. It was ushered to your notice by a few of those sneers to which his countenance by long training has become accustomed, and in the exuberance of his condescension, he was pleased to give an opinion, which his quondam friends were emulous to record: he pronounced it meagre, without probably considering that he too might be called on to give

an account, and thus furnish an opportunity to the public of judging of the excellence of his own. Meagre as this report was, it was true; the "records" are both before the public, and they will be able to decide between the historian of his Grace of Somerset's Arms, and the humble narration of the Castle Inn. It is impossible not to regret that the mutual good offices which have so long subsisted between "the most celebrated historian of the age" and his monthly eulo gist, should not have been productive of more happy effects, on the score of improvement; than the meagre specimen of narration which I have now before me; but in the extreme of his modesty (attest his modesty, ye dewy retirements of St. Martin's, ye secret recesses of St. Thomas's!) he conceived it to be an act of too dreadful daring, to attempt at rivalling his patron in the sublimity of his style, although he comes up to him in the genuineness and authenticity of his narrative!

Gentlemen, I should not have thought it worth my while to have commented at all upon such a trumpery portion of what certainly is not "new in the chronicles of Wiltshire," but for the falsehood of its averments, and the baseness of its intention. What is asserted in his account of this dinner of "the zealous friends of independence," is done with the evident intention of deceiving you into a belief, that a most numerous and highly respectable assembly of freeholders at a public dinner, gave their sanction to the principles of independence as they are professed by Mr. Benett; and that in consequence of a mutual good understanding on this head, the day, or the evening rather, was spent in the utmost harmony. This, gentlemen, is the sum and substance of what this "historian" relates, and than which, nothing can be more false-it is a lie throughout, and a lie, told for the basest of all purposes-for the purpose of deceiving the men to whom he approaches with his bonnet in his hand, to solicit a favour; his present victims and his future scorn! But for this, gentlemen, this precious entertainment should have passed unnoticed by me, and permitted "to waste its sweetness" unmolested in the columns of the paper it adorns, till, like the fulsome adulation of its author in his monthly as perations, it experienced the merited reward of flattery and falsehood, in its consignment to those temples, appropriated to the living, but to which the dead have no occasion to retire.

The motive of the writer is too evident to sanction doubt, and supersedes the necessity of conjecture. It was of consequence to the cause of "the zealous friends of independence" (by which you are to understand the men that have banished independence from the county, and who assembled on the present occasion to root out its memorial) it was a matter of the last importance to them, that you should believe Mr. Benett's

cause was more popular than Mr. Wellesley's, and especially in the north of Wilts. The multitude has an imposing sound, and if once such an impression as the one I have mentioned could have been produced upon the minds of the freeholders, its influence upon the backward, the doubtful, and the wavering, would have been looked forward to with the most hopeful sensations. Immediately therefore after Mr. Wellesley's friends had met and dined together, a dinner of Mr. Benett's friends was advertised under the specious name of "the friends of independence!" This was intended for a trial of strength-it was to shew which of the Candidates appeared the most popular-and from the contemptuous way in which the leader of the independents had expressed himself when reviewing the account of the former, it was expected that something marvellously grand in appearance, most imposing in point of respectability, and overwhelming in comparison of numbers, would be the leading and distinguishing features of this much talked of, and portentous assemblage of independents summoned to attend the Hampden of the West! He was a wise man who said "boast not thyself of to-morrow ;" and the bragging days of the party were terminated by the feast. You are told by the "historian" that a "numerous" company assembled on the occasion. Than this, gentlemen, nothing can be more false. The company amounted but to eighty-three! eighty-three freeholders! Look at the thousands in your county. Numerous indeed! To what will they next resort in order to deceive? They were far from numerous when compared with Mr. Wellesley's friends, and infinitely less so when compared with the great body of electors in the county. Perhaps he considered them numerous when compared with what he had a right to expect: this point I'll concede to him, here he is perfectly correct.

Now, gentlemen, this dinner was called by a respectable and popular magistrate; it was called for the purpose of shewing their respect to a gentleman who, we are told by his agents and bill-stickers, is a very popular Candidate, yet out of your large county, only eighty-three could be procured to attend, and a "historian" comes forward and tells you, that all these circumstances considered, the meeting at the Duke's Arms was “a numerous and most respectable one.' -Now what do you think of him? Swindon is nothing to this! What credit, think you, after this is to be attached to his moon-raking lucubrations? What think you of the man who can have the face to assert, before this intelligent county, that compared with the whole of the proprietors of its soil, eighty-three was a merous" proportion? But that the work of imposture might proceed with some certainty of success, the "historian" goes

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