LETTER VI.
IGNORANCE AND SUPERSTITION IN KENT.
In order to give the reader a clearer view of the state of the people in this district, I will here relate some remarkable transactions which took place in May, 1838, near Canterbury, in Kent. I was then living about thirty miles from the scene of action, and well remember the sensation these events produced in the public mind.
Kent is one of the most beautiful counties in England, and the villages and scenery around Canterbury are peculiarly English. Gently rising hills and picturesque vales, covered with a rich herbage, all giving proof of a minute and skilful husbandry, succeed to each other. Fields of waving corn are interspersed with gardens, hop grounds and orchards.
The hero of the Kent disturbances, was John Nicolls Thoms, the son of a small farmer and maltster, at St. Columb, in Cornwall. He appears to have entered life as cellarman to a wine merchant in Truro. Succeeding to his master's business, he conducted it for three or four years, when his warehouse was destroyed by fire, and he received about $15,000 in compensation from an insurance company. Since then, during more than ten years, he had been in no settled occupation. In the year 1833, he appeared as a candidate, successively for the representation of Canterbury and East Kent. His fine person and manners, and the eloquent appeals he made to popular feeling, secured him a certain degree of favor; but were not sufficient to gain his object. Though baffled in this, he continued to address the populace as their peculiar friend, and kept up his influence among
