If it charges me with using, or having endeavoured to use "Treasury influence," I call it forth to public light, and it shall from me, meet with public refutation.

As an officer of the revenue, Mr. Salmon has no right to know how Treasury influence may be employed. He may know, but I may probably care less than he does, who has the support of government. My agents have never had but one direction from me,-that of soliciting the suffrages of the freeholders for me as a truly independent man, who defies even Mr. Salmon himself to shew that he is not warranted in presenting himself before the county in that character.

Mr. Salmon intends, I presume, to convey to the public' the impression, that he takes no part in that which he has been facetiously pleased to term "my contest."

When Mr. Salmon received from Mr. Tinney the packet which he accepted, and retained, but in preference to forwarding it to Mr. Tilby, paraded the streets of Devizes with one of the Candidates, he might possibly not have perused the following lines in Blackstone's Commentaries (which to use a common phrase makes a virtue of necessity): "If any Officer of the Excise, Customs, Stamps, or certain other branches of the revenue, presume to intermeddle in Elections, by persuading any voter, or dissuading him, he forfeits one hundred pounds, and is disabled to hold any office."

I am, gentlemen,

Your very humble servant,

Marlborough, April 17th, 1818.

W. LONG WELLESLEY.

To the Printers of the Salisbury and Winchester
Journal.

GENTLEMEN,

If the person who signs himself "An Independent Freeholder," in a letter just published, be a man of respectability," and will avow his real name, I pledge myself to prove, even to that gentleman, that he has been led into great errors with respect to the motives which have induced me to present myself before the county.

The letter thus signed, seems to me to proceed from the pen of a disinterested, moderate, though misinformed individual. I am therefore ready to give privately (which I should prefer to do publicly) all the information in my power. relative to those inducements which have led me to aspire to

the honour of representing in Parliament the interests of this

great county.

I am, gentlemen,

Your very humble servant,

Marlborough, April 17th, 1818.

W. LONG WELLESLEY.

To the Printers of the Salisbury and Winchester Journal.

GENTLEMEN,

A LETTER having been received by me from a person signing himself "An Old Independent Freeholder," enclosing a document entitled "a Card," I must decline inserting it in any public print, as it has for its object the proposing a question to Mr. Benett.

In answer, however, to this Independent Freeholder's letter to me (but not to his Card), I have no hesitation in saying I am well" inclined to church and state as by law established." I am, gentlemen, Your very

Marlborough, April 17th, 1818.

humble servant, W. LONG WELLESLEY.

To the Printers of the Salisbury and Winchester Journal.

. GENTLEMEN,

I CONSIDER myself as the head of the oldest family in Wiltshire. I taught my children, from their earliest infancy, to be not less observant of their public duties than strenuous in maintaining the rights upon which the honour of our fa mily depends. In open controversy we study to be mild and benignant, never to attack the private character of our opponent, and above all to avoid the language of asperity: but whenever our honest principles and the independence of our family are questioned, then we habitually put forth our mighty strength; our adversaries tremble when they witness the undaunted and invincible array with which we prepare

to resist them.

Some person dares, in the postscript of a letter inserted in the last Bath Chronicle, and addressed to the freeholders of Wilts, to reflect upon our principles, and boasts that, though a native of Wiltshire, he is exempt from our moon-raking propensities.

What are the propensities which he would censure? Is it that in our choice of a representative we are likely to prefer a known Wiltshire gentleman, to a stranger born no one knows where'; one who spends his life and fortune among us, to a gentleman whom we never saw till he came to solicit our votes; one who addresses us with the respect due to independent freeholders-to one who plainly tells us that he does not offer himself so much from political motive as from the ambition of restoring the representation to a family of which he is accidentally the chief.

In my last letter I described the pretensions upon which the unsuccessful candidate in the great contest of 1772, presented himself for our choice. If that gentleman had not been of Wiltshire blood; if he had not from his birth been connected with the county; if he had not been already in its service, and well known to many of us; if his family had not, during many ages, been resident among us, and intimately connected with us in interest and in duty, I cannot persuade myself that it would have entered into his imagination that he could command our suffrages at that election. Of all the advantages which I have enumerated he very properly availed himself; but he committed the fatal error of claiming the representation almost of right, as one of the hereditary honours of his house. It was that claim alone which offended the great body of the freeholders; they resented it as an insult, and indignantly rejected the gentleman who made it, regardless of the respectability and the opulence of his family, of the independence of his political principles, of his acknowledged personal qualifications, and of all other considerations.

The proud spirit of independence which we evinced on that ever-memorable day, regarded Mr. Goddard himself much less than the principles upon which his cause rested. We disdained to permit the triumph of those principles to depend upon his individual exertions; nor would we suffer the private fortune of our champion to be impaired by the expenses of the election. Whole troops of freeholders in every district, exulting in the common cause, spontaneously associated, and presented themselves at the poll at their own expense. Am I forty-six years afterwards to be assailed by reproachful language for recounting to my posterity the exertions and the glories of their forefathers? Am I for this cause accused before you, gentlemen, as a man of moon-raking propensities, and that by one who advocates the cause of a present candidate, and is not ashamed to style himself a native of the county?

If at the next general election in 1774, an unknown young gentleman, resident at a distance from us, who had accidentally married into one of our county families, had presented himself as a candidate in opposition to Mr. Goddard, not being himself of Wiltshire blood, merely as having married a Wiltshire heiress; if he had told us plainly that it was his ambition to restore to the house which he acquired by that marriage the honour of representing us, but that he had no political motive for requesting it; if he seemed to claim the representation as the dowry of his wife, which he might take up at any time like the freedom of a borough, without the form of previous residence, or the shew of personal qualification; if his friends boasted also of his large estate, acquired by the marriage, in this and in other counties; if he and his agents also boasted that, though unknown. to the county, yet that he had the support of government, (one must presume exclusively ;) and if he had confessed his surprise that those who were connected with the government should take part against him; let the natives imagine how we should at that time have expressed our indig nation, and what decisive measures we should then have adopted to vindicate the independence of the county.

That one of the present candidates and his agents have asserted that he has the support of government, rests now upon the public uncontradicted testimony of Mr. W. W. Salmon, a gentleman who enjoys the confidence and esteem of every freeholder to whom he is known.

I wish that some intelligent person would explain what the candidate could have meant by mentioning that he had the support of government. Was it to terrify or to convert the freeholders for whose information it was intended? The men of Wiltshire are not easily to be intimidated; nor is their fidelity to the state to be doubted. Are any of them adverse to the happy establishment of the reigning family, or disposed to shake any one of the bulwarks of the constitution? Has any person who is adverse to that establishment and to those bulwarks presumed to present himself for their choice?-I expect an answer to these inquiries from some native of the county.

I do not believe that the present government would exert its influence in favour of any of our candidates; or that any one of them is more meritorious in the view of government than another; I trust that neither of them can be justly suspected of disaffection to the sovereign, or hostility to any of the principles of the constitution. If it be otherwise, let

the accusation be plainly made, that it may be plainly answered; but let it not be insinuated, till it is made, that political connection has rendered one candidate more loyal than his opponent, or that the present ministers would prostitute their power or their influence in favour of any candidate in direct violation of our undoubted privileges.

I take my leave of you at present, Mr. Editor, not doubting that the common cause of all the freeholders will be triumphant, and that the natives of Wiltshire will rejoice in the success of their native candidate.

I remain, Sir, your constant reader,

Swindon, April 17, 1818.

THE OLD MOON-RAKER.

WILTSHIRE ELECTION.

THE friends of Mr. Long Wellesley have directed me respectfully to inform the public, that they intend dining at my house (the Castle Inn, Marlborough ;) on Friday the 8th of May, at four o'clock.

THOMAS COOPER.

Tickets 5s. each, to be had at the principal Inns throughout the county.

To the Freeholders of the County of Wilts.

"Let independence o'er the day preside;

"Propitious power! my patron and my pride."

GENTLEMEN,

THE Salisbury Journal of yesterday contains a letter signed "The Old Moon-Raker," in which I am attacked in a very singular way. I believe I know the writer; and if I am right in my conjecture, thought I have only a slight acquaintance with, yet I have a great respect for him. I shall therefore reply to him with more courtesy than I would have exercised to almost any other man who had accused me so unjustly, and questioned me in such an authoritative way. I am accused of "assailing him with reproachful language," and "of accusing him as a man of moon-raking propensities;" also of "boasting to be myself exempt from such propensities." Now it happens that my letter was printed at Warminster on Friday the tenth of April; how then could it be an attack on the principles" or "propensities" contained in