We can assure you, that we entertain as high veneration, and cherish as jealous affection for the liberty of the press and the trial by jury, as any right-minded patriot would desire.

So far from designing, in any thing which we shall hereafter address to you, to weaken your attachment to those inestimable privileges, or any other of your privileges, liberties, or rights, we shall not cease to raise our voice to their honour, and in unison with all the genuine sous of our common country, exhort you to defend them to the last extremity.

Nevertheless, let us, in the sacred name of that blessed country which we so justly adore, let us, we beseech you, come to some understanding about the use and abuse of these our good things. Because it is commonly said, without any qualification, that an Englishman enjoys the privilege of uttering, or writing, or publishing whatever he pleases; it is not therefore true, nor is it true at all, that this his privilege has no limits. It does not, for example, clothe any man with the unrestrained power of indulging private malice-it gives to no man a licence to infringe the rights of another-to annoy his neighbour-to derogate from his fame or depreciate and vilify his character-to detract wantonly from the just consideration, and thereby from the utility of public functionaries-to attack the acknowledged and essential principles which hold together the great fabric of society to endanger the existence or security of those enjoyments for which alone man has associated with his fellow man; for the sake of which he has been obliged to submit to the controul of his natural liberty, and has become subject to the operation of public law. It must be evident to every man, that without restriction, the privilege of saying, writing, and publishing any thing would be a privilege directly hostile and contrary to every principle of social order, and therefore one which never has been, and never can be, permitted to co-exist with it. It

is indeed so evident, that we should think an apology due to our readers for introducing ourselves to them with so little apparent respect for their understandings, if we seriously considered the intelligeut, or even the major part of them, insensible to the distinctions we have made between the use and abuse of this privilege: and if the perpetual transgression, with impunity, of the true and acknowledged limits of its lawful exercise, did not tend to efface the impression of them, or at least to obscure their evidence, and so prevent their effect, upon the illiterate, aud the perverse, and the mischiefmaking classes of our community.

The good sense and providence of our fathers defined the limits, beyond which the exercise should be considered criminal; and endeavoured to prevent its abuse, not only by rules of moral discretion, but by penal enactments against transgressors convicted by the verdict of a jury of their peers.Now, because it is commonly said that every man is presumed to be innocent, till he has been proved to be guilty by a jury of his peers, it is not, therefore, true that every man who has not been accused before a jury, is innocent, however the law itself shall regard him and as little would it be true, that every accused man who has escaped conviction, was therefore ábsolutely exempt from guilt, even in that very instance in which he had been accused, and legally acquitted. There is frequently even superfluous evidence of the moral guilt of a man, at the same time that the necessary 'evidence is defective to convict him legally: and many degrees of even positive legal guilt are frequently accumulated before an evil proceeding has provoked an appeal to a legal tribunal. These considerations are of consequence, in order to prevent the seductive influence of bad examples afforded by licentious writers, whose actual impunity might otherwise appear to authorise an opinion of their innocence, respectability, and credit; and so attract confidence which they have neither earned nor deserve.

Our prospectus indicates a general intention to undeceive you respecting certain publications and certain persons, by whose insinuations, errors, and industry united, you are in danger of being betrayed; and of becoming either dupes of mercenary, or instruments of wicked designs, or the mere playthings of prurient and conceited wit, to be kicked about as the caprices of wanton frolic may direct. Now, in many cases, you might indeed innocently be one or the other, or all together: but in a case where your innocence is the very prize contended for, you cannot innocently remain, if even you have innocently become these dupes, instruments or playthings: and surely, as unreflecting confidence in impudent assertions, or false promises, or glittering expectations misled you in things which you thought indifferent, when these things change their aspect you will think it worth while to look a little into the pretensions and good faith of these arrogant and self-sufficient patrons whom you have allowed to captivate and cajole you; and who really trifle with your good sense, as well as tamper with your probity, to a degree which is often extremely humiliating, as well as extremely cruel.

To be the dupes of a merely mercenary design, which we really believe has continued as well as originated many of the periodical papers, reflects not upon you, if those papers convey only honest and useful information. It is not with those that any friend of his country will quarrel. Your curiosity makes a cheap and innocent purchase, and you cannot be the worse for your acquisition. But are there any of this kind? we hope so, and yet have seen many that have pretended to the merit without persevering in the condition. To plead after the idol-making silversmith at Ephesus," By this craft we have our wealth," is no exemption from the duty of abstaining from forbidden industry: and he, who under the pretence of "getting his bread honestly," disseminates food for evil passions, even though it be occasionally mixed with innocent and wholesome ingredients; he who flatters the vulgar propensities of one class, and the baneful prejudices or wrong affections of another, and is equally prepared to divert the censure or approbation due to virtue or to vice into the corrupt channels of his personal interest, if he should have no worse design, is so far from being innocently or lawfully employed, that he might justly partake of the reproof of the French libellist in former times who excused his crime, by pretending the necessity of living by his wits, and to whom the judge replied, that he could see no reason why such a man should live at all. The cultivation of the popular mind has many genuine attractions for writers who are honestly as well as industriously disposed: many thousands of our countrymen are not so far advanced even in elementary knowledge, as to make it difficult to supply them with cheap and salutary nourishment from the common fruits of our school education: and it is of more importance to them to illustrate and explain, such trite maxims as "that abuse always originates in error," or "that crimes originate in false calculations of the mind," than to puzzle them with problems about the finances, or corrupt them with libellous reflections upon their superiors.

Other causes, however, have operated in the production and circulation of other papers, which do not appear at first sight to you; the managers of which, under the disguise of your interests, mean to betray you into a dan gerous confidence in them, which is absolutely necessary to promote their ulterior views; and without which confidence, your benefit (which is always the result of your improvement) would be the only, as it is certainly the only legitimate, acquisition of all that zeal and activity which they employ, for the further purpose, however, of applying it to their own, and not to your uses and service. Now it is of these that we say, that we doubt not that you will arrive at a just suspicion of their innocence as fellow members of our common society. For what less than a just suspicion of a design to poison the very sourses of social and convivial intercourse, (in order to prepare remoter events) can be the result of detecting able writers, and knowing men in the act of misrepresenting the principles, and practices, and boundaries of public duties-mistating the terms of relation between public worth and private virtue-dividing opinions upon subjects, of at least questionable advantage to