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remove him for a time from the presence of that public "in whose affections he is daily gaining ground!!!"

Committee Room, White Hart Inn,
July 2, 1818

J. QUORUM, M D.
Y. CAVALRY, M.D.
D. CLUB, M.D.

Great Cry and Little Wool;

OR REDUCTION DESCENDING;
G;

OR

TOM CALLEY'S 900 VOTERS
For JouN BENETT,

Reduced to Nine!

To the Freeholders of the County of Wilts.
GENTLEMEN,

I HAVE the authority of the printers of the Salisbury and Winchester Journal, for informing you that the very partial and incorrect statement of the proceedings of the Wiltshire election, in the third page of their paper of this day, was sent to them by Mr. Long Wellesley's agent, and will be charged for as a common advertisement. You who have witnessed the proceedings of the election, and have read this false account of them, judge what credit is due to the persons who can fabricate such falsehoods. I am, Your very faithful and obedient servant, Salisbury, Monday, June 29, 1818. JOHN BENETT.

To the Freeholders of the County of Wilts.
GENTLEMEN,

gra

No expressions of mine can do justice to the feelings of titude your conduct inspires. From the commencement of this arduous contest to the present hour, I have, through your exertions, been constantly placed above my opponent on the Poll; and the daily increase of the majority over him, confirms my confidence in our ultimate success. All my predictions are verified, and I continue to receive hourly proofs of the accession of new friends, and of their unremitting zeal in my support.

You all witnessed, gentlemen, the effort made by my opponent this day to pass me on the Poll. His long talked-of reserve of northern forces has been brought into the field, headed by a new captain, fresh from his own defeat, but whose able generalship no one will venture to dispute. With the ordinary means you put into my hands, I maintained the struggle, and beat him. I shall, with your assistance, continue to do so, till even his most obstinate partisans must despair of his success. Gentlemen, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for

your unceasing kindness. Let me, however, entreat you not to relax in your efforts; although your enemy is at the last gasp, he has not yet expired. It is for you, at once, to destroy his hopes, and to convince him, however hateful that conviction may be, that I possess the good wishes and confidence of a great majority of the freeholders of the county, and am, in their opinion, a more fit person than he is to represent them. I have the honour to be, Gentlemen,

Your devoted faithful servant,

Salisbury, June 30, 1818. W. LONG WELLESLEY. STATE OF THE POLL.-SIXTH DAY.

Wellesley, 1719;

Methuen, 2389;

Benett, 1356.

To the Freeholders of the County of Wilts.

GENTLEMEN,

Ir is with no common feelings of exultation, that I now address you. You are men of no common mould-made for the very times in which you have appeared, and most amply qualified for the duties you have had to perform. You have not deceived me-you have not deceived your country, in the expectations we had formed of your high spirit, of your attachment to freedom, your aversion to injustice and oppression. Free, amongst the free-born, you have shewn that time, that custom, has not been able to root out the love of that liberty to which you were born, which your forefathers bequeathed to you-of which, for nearly half a century, you have been deprived but which you are now again going to enjoy, and transmit to your posterity. It is impossible to do justice to those virtuous energies which you have manifested; to the steady, cool, and constitutional way in which you have con-. ducted yourselves, during a struggle for all that is dear to you as Englishmen. You have done well-you have acted nobly; persevere, and success is certain. To quote the language of one of those canting hypocrites, whose sole aim has been to mislead you to divert your attention from what was the true state of the question to what was not-who, in company with his other fellow-labourers, industriously attempted to rivet those chains which had goaded you almost to madness:-"It makes my heart warm," when I see you coming in such troops to rescue your enslaved and degraded county from the grasp of a tyranny, which, though it preserved the forms of law, destroyed the spirit of our constitution. Pretending that all this was done from pure regard to you to save your time, your trou ble, your pockets, to keep the county tranquil, and all the rest of the pretty stories which the Independent Freeholder, the Old Moon-Raker, and the rest of the Quorum band of patriots

were continually dinning in your ears-with which they were constantly disgusting your eyes. They have disappeared, however they have given up their cause as hopeless-they have left their champion to fight and fall by himself, unprotected and unpitied..

There is something so lovely in freedom, gentlemen, that one would almost be tempted to go greater lengths to obtain it than for any other blessing that I know of; in such cases, we "make a virtue of necessity," and rather do what we can, than what we can warrant. But, in the struggle in which you are engaged, you have conducted yourselves in a way which has brought credit to your cause, and will render your triumph more conspicuously splendid. You judge rightly, in believing with me, that it is enough for an enemy to be beaten, without being insulted. When my adversary is fallen, I forget that he was my foe, and consider him only in the light of a man and a brother. I may be allowed to compassionate what I have been most anxious to produce--what I behold not only without regret, but with exultation. That Mr. Benett should thus become an object of pity even to his enemies, he is entirely indebted to himself, and to the means that have been resorted to, to secure his election. There has been nothing fair in the methods they have employed;-every thing unhandsome has been said of his opponent. The sacrifice of truth has been no object;-no barrier has been found sufficient to arrest the progress of their calumny; it has now become a suicide, its malignancy has deprived it of existence. Like the scorpion, it has stung itself, and died of its venom. You, gentlemen, have affixed the seal to its destruction, by the generous, prompt, and unbiassed support which you are so liberally, so constantly, giving Mr. Wellesley. There is nothing done, while there is something to do; continue your exertions in his behalf, he will prove himself worthy of them, place him not only above the reach of danger, but beyond the suggestions of doubt. I do not merely wish him to beat, but also to triumph; and his enemies not only to be vanquished, but cut off from hope. His cause is yours; in him you struggle, in him you overcome. But numbers only will make your triumph perpetual. Exercise your rights in his behalf who first taught your oppressors to respect them; give him your votes, through whom alone you have had the privilege of voting; nor be deterred by the threats of either Quorum or Clubs, nor misled by the artifice they may employ. You have seen, you have heard Mr. Wellesley, you are now fully competent to judge for yourselves; of his talents there can be no doubt, his independence is above suspicion, and his character, though maligned in every possible shape, has risen superior to reproach. The

slanders of his enemies have proved the basis of his fame; he has recovered strength by every fall, and grown confident and courageous as the attacks have been repeated.

I shall not detain you from the important business you have before you, longer than by adverting to one or two publications, evidently intended to damp the laudable zeal you have shewn in behalf of Wellesley and independence. The first of these will be found in the third page of the Salisbury Journal, under the head of " Falsehoods, Evasions, Misrepresentations." In this as on former occasions they have sup plied me with the materials for the war, for certainly "fulsehood, evasion, misrepresentation" were never more strongly depicted than in the letter before me, and which is signed "A Freeholder." It is evident as noon-day that when Mr. W. charges Mr. Benett and his friends with being under the influence of the Quorum and the clubs, he asserts not only what is a truth in itself, but what all the county believes. Should any doubt remain of its certainty, read the list of his Committee that endless list of 'Squires which have been published with so much pomp; there you will find the Quorum and the clubs, not in their collective capacity I grant you, but in a capacity equally inimical to your freedom and rights. There would not have been half the danger had they come forward collectively-then you would have seen their object at once, and would have been upon your guard; but it is the fraud they have practised upon you, that makes the attempt the more to be dreaded, because less liable to suspicion.

If Mr. Wellesley did affirm that but for Mr. Benett there would have been no Corn Bill, he asserted nothing but the truth. Mr. Benett's evidence before the House of Lords was voluntary; he was not compelled to go there; and how came it to pass that he alone, of all the gentlemen invited, should have taken such a distinguished part in a measure, which the generality of the people consider so very obnoxious? Besides, if there were no truth in the allegation, they would not discover so much anxiety to disprove it, with no new materials by the bye, and always with such bad success.

The charge of exciting disaffection and tumult can with no propriety be brought against Mr. Wellesley. He did not come to Devizes on the day of Nomination, with a troop of disguised soldiers, armed with bludgeons weighing from three to four pounds each. He never encouraged the people to hoot and hiss the other Candidates; he never ordered a troop to form for the purpose of obstructing Mr. Methuen's approach to his inn, or compel him, as at Wilton, to wade through horse-hoofs to make his way to the Cross! Who is it that has created all the riots in the county, or attempted

- tumults at the place of election ;-not Mr. Wellesley, but the troop of Mr. Benett's friends. I was amongst the five thou sand who were at Devizes, and what I saw and heard, I must believe; I heard and saw distinctly Mr. Calley (now no longer a member for Cricklade); I saw Mr. Peniston of Salisbury, the serjeant-major of the troop, and many others, but chiefly those two, do every thing by words and signs sufficient to excite the people to tumult. Every thing was done that could irritate the people, while their patience and moderation, after repeated aggressions, were most exemplary. If Devizes had been laid in ashes, it must have been wholly attributable to Mr. Benett's troops; were the Downs to become a scene of riot and confusion, it must be wholly ascribed to the same cause; while their very appearance at the hustings furnishes one of the strongest arguments against Mr. Benett's return. Shall a man so obnoxious to the county, that he cannot appear in the streets by himself, nor even amongst the freeholders whose voices he solicits, without a guard of men armed with bludgeons, sword-sticks, and pistols; shall such a man be deemed a fit and proper person to represent the county of Wilts? Shall a man, whose only claim to your attachment, is the proofs he brings with him how much he is hated, have those honours conferred upon him, which you bestow only upon those you love? Shall not the array with which he is attended, for the purpose of intimidation, open your eyes as to the interest upon which he founds his claim; and in what a contemptible light he holds your elective franchise?-Believe me, gentlemen, such a man must be of all men the most unfit and improper to represent this county. Mr. Wellesley has a different way of courting your regard, and nothing can be more gratifying than to see the way in which you make him a return. Can any thing be so manly, so disinterested, so kind? The Sixth Day's Poll! and Mr. Wellesley-the envied-the abused Mr. Wellesley is nearly four hundred a-head of the man of "high honour," "five hundred years' genealogy," a family without a "sinecurist," "local knowledge," "local interests," ""local interests," "Prize Essays," and "Letters on Tythes," "active magistracy," Captain of the Yeomanry," agricultural speculation," "Scotch carts," "blacksmith's wages," ""painting and glazing," "fish-ponds, dug by paupers," John Fisher's memoirs, Spanish sheep, French cows, China pigs, Swedish turnips, Irish grass, Tartary oats, and Heligoland beans! Yes, gentlemen, in despite of all these high advantages, Mr. John Benett, for the true honour of our "Wiltshire family," is now nearly four hundred votes behind Mr. Wellesley; who they said, by they I mean my namesake, but not a member of my family, "Timothy

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