are more likely to receive it profitably by not being at once overdosed with it. But, Sir, in the name of common sense, who could make you insert all those characters from your tenantry; why, I thought at first it was Messrs Day and Martin, who were offering their blacking to the county, when I saw such a family of puffs branching forth from every column of the newspapers. Thus bad begins, but worse remains behind; you have received no stain from all the filth that has been emptied upon you from the copious reservoir of your enemies, equal to the praise inflicted upon you by the venal goose-quill of Titus Trueman. You have been eulogized without being advanced by it; you have been caricatured un intentionally by your bedauber; you have been satirized, without finding it out, by high-sounding epithets and unap propriate eulogiums, ("Praise undeserved is satire in disguise") to which your character has no claim, and your merit no pretension. Such, Sir, is the value of the services which have been rendered you by the ravings of Titus Trueman. That this fellow is paid there can be no doubt; and I fear the county bas as little from whom the money comes. Titus Trueman is a fine sounding name truly, and the Jackdaw really assumes a strut as he exhibits his borrowed plumage, which, in spite of a thorough want of common education, common grammar, common decency, and common sense, makes one almost smile with his pomposity, when so ludicrously contrasted with his own insignificance and stupidity. But, Sir, valuable as his services may have appeared, dearly as you have paid for them, has it never occurred to you, that the fable may be yet rea lized, and this miscreant stripped of the feathers under which he has concealed or rather displayed his native vulgarity and worthlessness? What would your feeling be, Sir, if the meanest, the basest, and most dirty motives could be brought home to that extoller of your merits; that infamous and hired ca lumniator of your rivals? What if it should turn out to be a character of the lowest description, the most revolting to the manly feeling of free-born Britons, a partner of Castles and Oliver, a false and odious informer, a mere spy, as he admits himself to be by the insinuations which he vomits forth, watching in some sink less foul than his disposition, the footsteps of another candidate from house to house, misrepresenting with downright falsehoods, and daring to call upon him to explain why he waited upon the agent of Mr. Benett? Shall we not fairly conclude, that either this is a most malicious and vain attempt to raise a cry of coalition against Mr. Methuen, or that that gentleman is mad? What possible advantage could a coalition be to him? The only effect would be, his ruin.' This Titus Trueman knows, and that it is good ground to work

upon. But, Sir, after this candid conduct and explanation which Mr. Methuen has shewn and given, it would be much more honourable to you, it would be more creditable to your agents to have rejected such miserable expedients, to have trusted your case to the same fair means which have been before resorted to with success; and to have followed that fair example which has been so handsomely set by our present, I should say late representative. What, Sir, if you were farther to be told the reason of this fellow's antipathy to Mr. Methuen, and devotion to Mr. Benett? What, Sir, if you were to hear that the former offended him by not consenting to have his pocket picked of five guineas by paying that sum in advance for an article which he never made, and which he actually did not know how to make, never beginning it, and never finishing it? What, Sir, if you were to hear this same libeller had originally written a high panegyric of Mr. Benett, loaded with abuse of you, and only volunteered for your services because he was rejected in another quarter? Sir, I say, if these facts could be proved, where are the praises and patriotism of Titus Trueman? If your eyes are not open, those of the county are, long before this, to the miserable motives of this convicted spy, this Oliver or Castles of Salisbury, sent probably by Government to assist you in undermining the interest of the most independent Candidate among you; this atrocious and despicable slanderer, who is more likely to be exalted to that eminence which he merits, than you are to attain the summit of your vain and transitory ambition. Sir, I will not conceal the fact: this is not the first letter that has appeared from me; I before addressed myself in general terins of admonition towards Mr. Benett and you; I gave you friendly caution; I told you a rod was in pickle, if necessary, every stroke of which should draw blood. The scourge is still in my hand, and ready to make good its threatened and indeed merited castigation. But I am once more disposed to deal lightly with your foibles, and restrain that vengeance which the example of your champion would authorise. He is, as I before said, safe in his thorough insignificance; but that insignificance will not extend its ægis on its patron and renter. To attack him, I am aware, is like" rolling a chimney-sweeper in the mud ;" but for this reason the county was not to remain in the dark as to the minutest traits of character of its would-be patriot and satirist. Now, Sir, I shall take my leave for the present of you, and once more assure you that I have as little desire to hurt your feelings as I have intention to permit Mr. Methuen to be run down by unfair suspicions, encouraged by anonymous slanderers.c 1 remain, Sir, your old acquaintance,

VETERAN.

*

P.S. I signed myself in my last, The Friend of Mr. Benett, but not at the expense of Mr. Methuen; I have not altered my signature. Perhaps, with my opinion, you have no right to complain of the alteration. You may once more be assured that it is not Titus Trueman, employed by you or your agents. The county now knows the value of the writer from the character of the man. I have no wish to stop him; let him wade on up to his neck in ink, he will never be again noticed :

"Destroy his web of calumny in vain,

The creature's at his dirty work again."

BROTHER FREEHOLDERS!-I did not intend to have troubled you again, but that I think the letter, signed W. L. Wellesley, in the last paper, is an attempt, and a gross one, to mislead the electors of Wiltshire. No man has stronger feelings of reprobation for the conduct of this Mr. Everett than I have; but how can Mr. Benett be made in any way responsible for conduct, over which he has no control? It proves, therefore, only this, that Mr. B. has, like the rest of the world, a friend more zealous than wise, and here is the sum of the delinquency, as far as it affects the cause of Benett; unless, indeed, Mr. Wellesley is prepared to assert that he has no such injudicious friend; unless he will go further, and pledge himself not to poll a vote which he may have reason to believe was obtained by similar means. If he will not do all this, Quis tulerit Graçchos de seditione querentes.

Men of Wiltshire, I have heard of a dinner at Marlborough, of Mr. Wellesley's friends, the price of which, including wine, was five shillings a-head; I have heard, also, that the entertainment was a sumptuous one; that public singers and newspaper reporters were retained, and that a considerable party continued till after sun-rise, drinking French wines. Five shillings per man cover the expense? impossible! By whom, therefore, was the surplus defrayed? If by Mr. Wellesley, to what an abyss of degradation are we sunk? Treating-houses opened for the freeholders of Wiltshire? Is this to be submitted to? Had such a proceeding taken place after the writ had issued, Mr. W.'s election would have been vacated by the treating-act; and shall we be only honest by compulsion? Is our independence such only as is enforced by penal laws, and not that which is the result of moral feeling? If it is, I shall curse the hour that provoked this contest, exposing, as it does, the nakedness of my native county-Not this the act of an injudicious friend, over whom the Candidate has no controlnot this the overheated and unauthorised zeal of a professional agent, but a shameless attempt at corruption, broad and glaring as the sun at noon-day.

Of Mr. Wellesley I repeat I know nothing, and am most

willing to believe that he is the victim of bad advice, in his intercourse with the world. I have never heard that he has been guilty of any thing unworthy the character of a gentleman, or of the name of Wellesley; but there is some secret agent that directs him to ill; let me, then, tell this man, whoever he may be, that his measures will be as devoid of success, as his machinations are devoid of principle; and that, unless Wiltshire has ceased to be what I can remember that it was, 1 may venture to quote to him from a celebrated author"He may bribe, but he will not seduce; he may buy, but he will not gain; he may lie, but he will not deceive."

I shall wait most anxiously to hear, that Mr. Wellesley paid nothing more than his own share at the tavern at Marlborough. A CONSCIENTIOUS FREEHOLDER.

To my Brother Yeomen and Freeholders of the County of Wilts.

RESPECTED FRIENDS, AS I am well known to many of you, and, I trust, all who do know me consider me a peaceable man, a supporter of good government and civil order, not too precipitant; hitherto, therefore, I have promised no support to either of our present Candidates, I have watched all their proceedings, from the beginning of their canvass, and have seen much to find fault with, and, in particular, my mind has been greatly ruffled ever since the appearance of a letter in the Salisbury Journal, signed W. Long Wellesley, purporting to be an answer to an advertisement of some of our respected magistrates. I was then, and still am, much astonished that W. L. Wellesley should so far forget what is due to good order and common courtesy, as to send forth amongst us a principle so dangerous to the country at large, and even dangerous to the crown itself! Had I the ability, or was in the habit of much writing, I should give you my ideas at length upon the evil tendency of Mr. L. Wellesley's conduct; let it suffice, therefore, for me to call your serious attention to the whole of his proceedings, and I am sure you will not yoke yourselves under the banners of so much despotism; for my own part, I am clearly of opinion that W. L. Wellesley is unfit to sit in judgment in any civilized country whatever.— It is, however, my sincere wish that he do now begin to purge his mind of those arbitrary inlets which are too apparent, and which were, no doubt, fostered in Turkey; he may, then, at some future time, deserve some notice; and I do also seriously advise him, before he again attempts to disturb the peace of this or any other county, that he do zealously endeavour to initiate himself into the true principles of the British constitu

N N

7

tion, with which he appears at present to be totally unacquainted, and which, in my opinion, does add but little to the boasted honour of Draycot-House, neither does it reflect much credit upon those who had the care of his education.

(Wellesley)---And, as Draycot-House alone has caused thy vow,
(Benett)To thee alone we look, supporter of our plough.
Farewel for the present,

West-End, 12th 6th month, 1818.

WILTS ELECTION.

THE following Gentlemen have already signified their willingness to be a Committee for the purpose of conducting Mr. Benett's interests in the approaching Election for the County of Wilts; they intend to meet from time to time, and every day during the Election, at the Office of their Secretary, Mr. Tinney, at Salisbury, to whom all communications on the subject are requested to be addressed.