Affairs seemed rapidly hastening to a crisis: France saw with delight the numbers seduced by the sophistry of her Writers, and by the alluring prospects of proscription and plunder; and her Agents, who snuffed the scent of blood like Vultures, already anticipated the Revolution which they now believed inevitable; when the Ministry, who had viewed the progress of the evil with an anxious but unterrified eye, roused themselves into unexampled energy, and called on the Nation to rally round the Constitution which they had received from their Forefathers.
The call was gloriously answered;—Thousands and tens of thousands sprung forth in its defence; and the barbarous hordes which so lately threatened its destruction, overawed by their numbers, shrunk from the contest without a struggle, and vanished from the field.
But the nature of a Jacobin is restless. His hatred of all subordination is unbounded, and his thirst of plunder and blood urgent and insatiable. In arms he found himself infinitely too weak to obtain his purpose; he must, therefore, have recourse again to artifice; and by fallacies and lies, endeavoured to subvert and betray the judgment of those he could not openly hope to subdue.
For this purpose, the Press was engaged, and almost monopolized in all its branches: Reviews, Registers, Monthly Magazines, and Morning and Evening Prints, sprung forth in abundance.
Of these last (the only Publications with which We have any immediate concern), it is not too much to say, that they have laboured in the cause of infamy, with a perseverance which no sense of shame could repress, and no dread of punishment overcome. The objects committed to their charge were multifarious. They were to revile all Religions, but particularly the Christian, whose DIVINE FOUNDER was to be blasphemously compared to Bacchus, and represented as equally ideal, or, if real, more bestial and besotted! They were to magnify the power of France, on all occasions; to deny her murders; to palliate her robberies; to suppress all mention of her miseries, and to hold her forth to the unenlightened Englishman as the mirror of justice, and truth, and generosity, and meekness, and humanity, and moderation, and tender forbearance:—and, on the other hand, they were to depreciate the spirit, and the courage, and the resources of England: they were to impede, if possible, and if not, to ridicule and revile, every measure which the honour, the prosperity, or the safety of the Country might imperiously require; they were to represent the Government as insidiously aiming to enslave the Nation, by every attempt to maintain its Independence; and the majority of both Houses, the great body of Proprietors, as anxious to scatter and confound that wealth, which their Patrons alone, the respectable sweepings of Craven-House, and the Crown and Anchor Tavern, were solicitous to augment and preserve.
These, our readers will allow, were no common objects, and if they have looked into the Morning Chronicle, Morning Post, and Courier Journals to which our attention has been chiefly directed, they must have seen that their attainment was sought by no common means; by an invariable course of Falsehood and Misrepresentation—such, at least, was our idea on the first perusal of these Papers, an idea which every succeeding one served to strengthen and confirm.
To detect and expose this Falsehood, and to correct this Misrepresentation, became at length an object of indispensable necessity: a variety of applications of the most malignant nature had obtained currency and credit, from the unblushing impudence with which they were first obtruded on the Public by the Agents of Sedition, and the apathy with which they were suffered to pass uncontradicted by those who despised them for their atrocity, or ridiculed them for their folly:—these were unfortunately operating on the less enlightened part of the Nation; and it was from a full conviction of the pernicious effects they were calculated to produce, that we finally determined to step forth (after patiently waiting to see whether the business would not be taken up by abler hands), and to oppose such antidotes to the evil, as a regard for truth, and a sincere love and veneration for the Constitution under which we have flourished for ages, could supply.
How we have succeeded must be left to the judgment of the Public. If we might venture, indeed, to conjecture from the support which we have experienced, the result would be flattering in an unusual degree. Three complete Editions of our Paper (a circumstance, we believe, as yet without a precedent) have been disposed of, and the demand for them still increases.
But the motives of Profit, as will readily, we believe, be granted to us, have little influence on our minds: we contemplate the extensive circulation of our Paper with pleasure, solely from the consideration of the VAST NUMBERS of our Countrymen whom we have fortified by our animadversions against the profligate attacks of the Agents of Sedition, whether furnished by the Whig Club, the Corresponding Society, or the Directory of France.
Calculation was not originally our delight. Nor was it till after we saw the wonderful effects which it produced in the pages of the Jacobinical Arithmeticians that we were tempted to adopt it. Our first Essay, however, was crowned with the most complete success. In our Seventh Number, we gave (still following the laudable example of the Jacobins, who, when a Ship is to be fitted out, or a Regiment raised, for the purpose of defending our Country from an insolent and barbarous foe, nicely calculate how many idle mouths might be fed by the sums required)—We gave, we say, as accurate a statement as we could form, of the number of People that might be supplied with wholesome food for one day, by the SURCHARGE levied on the Duke of Bedford—a statement which, we are happy to add, placed the matter in so clear a light that we have since had no occasion to repeat it.