SIR, Chillon-House, March 4th, 1818. I LOSE no time in thus publicly returning my warmest thanks to yourself and those independent freeholders for the county of Wilts who have done me the honour to sign a requisition (which I received at a late hour yesterday evening,) as well as to the numerous voters from different parts of this county that had previously solicited me to become a candidate for its representation. When that bulwark of British liberty, the Habeas Corpus, can be suspended at the will and caprice of a minister when the discussion on the necessity for so unconstitutional a proceeding is inquired into by a secret committee composed of ministers and their friends, and a bill of indemnity brought forward as a thing of course, it becomes more than ever necessary to scrutinize the politics of the candidates that offer themselves to your notice. A seat in Parliament never was my ambition, and if it ever had been, the perfect cipher that an independent is now become therein, would have totally deprived me thereof. In declining offering myself for the honour you have proposed, I beg you will rest assured how happy I shall be on all occasions to promote the interests of the county of Wilts, and how devotedly I am Your very humble servant, To Wm. Hallett, Esq. &c. &c. FULWAR CRAVEN. COUNTY OF WILTS. I AM an old-fashioned man, and do not like to see old customs abandoned, especially when those customs have been deemed salutary, as productive of general good, and contributing to the peace and harmony of a county. With such sentiments I cannot but lament, and disapprove of the new system which has been introduced into our county, on an expected vacancy in its representation, by canvassing previous to the day appointed for a nomination. The representation of a county, though a most honourable, yet cannot be considered as an idle office; it should be entrusted only to a man of the strictest integrity and independence; to one who will consider himself as bound to support the constitution and government of our country, and who will dare, whenever the motives of that government are wrong, to oppose them. Such is the man, endowed with a proper sense of religion, morality, and good judgment, whom I would wish to trust as representative for the county of Wilts, for it matters but little whether he be gifted with the powers of oratory or not.* At the present moment two candidates have presented themselves before the public-others, perhaps, (adhering to our old customs,) may appear on the day of nomination. It is, therefore, a duty incumbent on the freeholders to make no promises previous to that day, when the general sense of the county will be taken, and the merits and interests of each candidate will be publicly and impartially canvassed and ascertained. AN OLD FREEHOLDER. To the Noblemen, Gentlemen, Clergy, Yeomanry, and Freeholders in general of the County of Wilts. GENTLEMEN, I CANNOT quit the northern districts of this county to attend the Assizes at Salisbury without returning you my sincere thanks for the very valuable promises of support which I have universally received from the respectable gentlemen freeholders resident in this neighbourhood. I have more particularly to return my warmest thanks to the freeholders residing in Chippenham, Trowbridge, Bradford, Calne, Warminster, Wootton Basset, &c. &c. The flattering manner in which my pretensions have been received will operate as an additional motive for my applying my most anxious zeal in endeavouring to gain a fuller knowledge of the local interests of this independent county: and should I fortunately succeed in obtaining the distinguished honour of being one of your Representatives in Parliament, it will be my greatest ambition to devote the whole of my attention to the fulfilling of the important duties attached to that high office. It was impossible, under the peculiar circumstances which . hastily called me forward, regularly to pay my respects to all the freeholders even in the districts which I have hitherto visited. But as soon as the Assize business at Salisbury is concluded, I shall consider it to be my duty, without regard to any other pursuits, to pay my respects to every freeholder in the county individually. I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, Your very obedient humble servant, Draycot House, March 8, 1818. W. LONG WELLESLEY. To the Gentlemen, Clergy, Yeomanry, and Freeholders in general of the County of Wilts. GENTLEMEN, I HAVE had the peculiar gratification of meeting with the same success here which has attended me generally throughout my canvass. In quitting Salisbury, therefore, to continue the honour of paying my personal respects to those yeomen and freeholders resident in other parts of the county, it is a duty incumbent on me to return my friends in this city my warmest acknowledgments for their kind exertions in my favour. Though an Englishman born and educated, I cannot call Wiltshire my native county; but my dearest and best interests are there situated, and I have fixed upon this independent county as the place of my constant residence. I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, Your very obedient humble servant, Salisbury, March 12, 1818. W. LONG WELLESLEY. To the Freeholders of the County of Wilts. GENTLEMEN, I OFFER you my most grateful thanks for the kind and distinguished favour which you have shewn me in my most successful canvass of this independent county. Anxious to introduce myself to every individual, whose public interests it may hereafter be my duty vigilantly to protect, I shall persevere in my exertions till I have had the honour of paying my personal respects to every freeholder. I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to those who have already signified that they deem me worthy of their confidence in the most important station to which an Englishman can aspire-that of representing his native county in the great Council of the Nation: I trust that I shall be honoured with equal favour and confidence from those freeholders whose votes I have not yet been able personally to solicit, but upon whom I shall wait (without intentionally neglecting any one) as speedily as the greatness of the undertaking will permit. In the mean time I earnestly entreat my friends to continue their most kind exertions in my behalf, by which alone my ultimate success can be secured; when it is secured, I shall be anxious to evince my sense of the great honour conferred on me, by unremitting attention to my duties in Parliament, by a rigid adherence to all the principles of our invaluable constitution, and by a zealous regard to all the local concerns of the county; with which, during my past life, I have endeavoured to make myself acquainted. I have the honour to be, Your most obliged and devoted servant, Salisbury, March 7, 1818. JOHN BENETT. WILTS ELECTION. Ir has been agreed by Thomas King and Henry Foot, Esqrs. and many of the respectable inhabitants of the Chalk Hundred, that they will convey to the poll such of the freeholders in their vicinity (who may require the same) as are in the interest of Mr. Benett, whenever their services may be required, free of every expense to that gentleman; and that they will, in the mean time, collectively and individually, use every exertion to secure his return. To Messrs. Brodie and Dowding, I REQUEST that you will announce it as the intention of many respectable freeholders in this neighbourhood to take the charge of bringing the friends of Mr. Methuen and Mr. Benett to the poll at Wilton without expense to him. I am, Gentlemen, Your humble servant, Chilton House, March 30, 1818. To the Printers of the Salisbury and Winchester GENTLEMEN,-A serious attack upon my character having appeared in the Reading Paper, which I have thought it my duty to answer, I beg you will insert in your paper my answer, together with the letter signed "Timothy Trueman."I am, Gentlemen, Draycot House, Your obedient Servant, Mr. EDITOR,-I am not in the habit of laying before the public unauthenticated facts. Those which I shall now offer to the moral reflections of the humane and intelligent reader are taken from Mr. Hobhouse's Travels through Albania and Greece, to Constantinople; a book lately published, which seems, on every account, to merit a high degree of public estimation. To this work is an Appendix respecting the passage of the British fleet through the Dardanelles :-"This passage was disastrous, from the fire of two famous castles which commanded it: but the return would have been much more so, because, independent of these castles, the Turks had availed themselves of our delay, and had planted heavy artillery for miles on either shore ;" and the sea is there so narrow, that Lord Byron, Mr. H's fellow traveller, actually swam across it, realizing the feat attributed to Leander of old. Imagination cannot figure to itself an act of more flagrant injustice, or more horrible cruelty than that which was designed to be accomplished by this perilous and ill-concerted enterprise. Its miscarriage attaches disgrace on its projector alone -but its success would have been a more deplorable calamity; for it would have attached indelible infamy on the nation at large, and rendered us unworthy to bear the name of a Christian people. Mr. Hobhouse's intention is to exculpate the cabinet at home from all participation in this horrible project, and to lay the whole blame of it on the Secretary of Legation, a young man of extreme arrogance and presumption, who, during what he calls the long and unfortunate illness of the Ambassador,' had the sole management of the British interests at the Ottoman court. This vapouring diplomatist, conceiving that he would ingratiate himself in a certain quarter, by forcing the Turks to renounce their neutrality, adopted the following menace to effect that purpose. He threatened to lay Constantinople in ashes, by the same means which were used against Copenhagen, if the Porte would not instant |