contest the first open election for the two-seat Belfast constituency, previously in the "pocket" of the town's proprietor, Lord Donegall. Emerson choose to stand as an Independent Whig in the Donegall interest, while (consistent with both is father's and his uncle's democratic politics) stood as a Whig on a platform of further reform. Emerson Tennent and a Tory candidate prevailed in a victory that Protestant loyalists celebrated with an attack on the central Catholic district (Hercules Street) and with an attempt to ransack Robert Tennent's house. Once in Parliament, Emerson Tennent took the Tory whip. He supported Sir Robert Peel in his first ministry (1834-35), but broke with his "liberal Conservatives" over the Corn Laws introduced in his second (1841-46). He joined the moderate Conservative followers of Edward Smith-Stanley, the Earl of Derby. Replying to Daniel O'Connell in the 1834 Commons debate on Repeal of the Union, Emerson Tennent sought to eschew the Protestant sectionalism and fear of Catholicism, generally assumed to be the central elements of unionist thought. Instead, he raised issues close to O'Connell heart as a campaigning abolitionist. Reflecting on the recent vote to suppress slavery in the British Empire, he remarked:I shall never fail to regard it as a proud distinction that I have myself been enabled, during the course of the last twelve months, to contribute my own humble vote, to extend the blessings of freedom from the confines of India to the remotest shores of the Atlantic; to liberate the Hindoo, and to strike off the fetters of the African. These are the triumphs beyond the reach of a 'Local Legislature'...toward which the highest ambition of an Irish Parliament could never soar; these are the honours which enable our birth-place as Irishmen, to add to our distinctions the glory of being Britons.At the end of 1845, his promising parliamentary career (in 1841 he had been made Secretary to the Board of Control) came, temporarily, to end when he realised that his strong support for Catholic civil and political equality in Ireland had compromised his chances of re-election from Belfast. Following apparent defeat in the August 1837 general election, he was only seated on petition. In the July 1841 general election his victory was disputed, and a new writ issued; he regained the seat in the ensuing by-election (August 1842). Colonial administrator, Ceylon In 1845 Emerson Tennent was knighted and appointed Colonial Secretary of Ceylon,