It is our intention to publish Weekly, during the Session of Parliament, a Paper, containing,
First, An Abstract of the important events of the week, both at home and abroad.
Secondly, Such Reflections as may naturally arise out of them: and,
Thirdly, A contradiction and confutation of the falsehoods and misrepresentations concerning these events, their causes, and their consequences, which may be found in the Papers devoted to the cause of Sedition and Irreligion, to the pay or principles of France.
This last, as it is by far the most important, will in all probability be the most copious of the three heads; and is that to which, above all others, We wish to direct the attention of our Readers.
We propose diligently to collect, as far as the range of our own daily reading will enable us, and We promise willingly to receive, from whatever quarter they may come, the several articles of this kind which require to be thus contradicted or confuted; which will naturally divide themselves into different classes, according to their different degrees of stupidity or malignity.
There are, for instance (to begin with those of the highest order), the Lies of the Week; the downright, direct, unblushing falsehoods, which have no colour or foundation whatever, and which must at the very moment of their being written, have been known to the writer to be wholly destitute of truth.
Next in rank come Misrepresentations which, taking for their groundwork facts in substance true, do so colour and distort them in description, as to take away all semblance of their real nature and character.
Lastly, The most venial, though by no means the least mischievous class, are Mistakes; under which description are included all those Hints, Conjectures, and Apprehensions, those Anticipations of Sorrow and Deprecations of Calamity, in which Writers who labour under too great an anxiety for the Public Welfare are apt to indulge; and which, when falsified by the event, they are generally too much occupied to find leisure to retract or disavow:—A trouble which We shall have great pleasure in taking off these Gentlemen’s hands.
To each of these several articles We shall carefully affix the name and date of the Publication from which We may take the liberty of borrowing it.