PREFACE. 3 



individuals, but upon facts and principles. We have no party nothing 

 to gain from one interest, or to apprehend from the other. Our broad 

 object, as we have already declared, is the general good ; our endeavour 

 always to give our aid to that party which seems most in need of it. 

 Under such feelings, it will not be deemed extraordinary, if we fre- 

 quently find ourselves in the situation of opposing the wealthy, who are 

 our natural friends and supporters and siding with the poor, from whom 

 we can gain nothing. The general good, however, it is that forms the 

 safety and the only real safety of any country. Those advantages 

 which one part of society holds at the expense, and, unfairly to the 

 detriment of, the rest, are pregnant to themselves, no less than to their 

 opponents, with danger and with mischief; and our aim for which we 

 challenge the strictest scrutiny though it may be by the freest dis- 

 cussion to elicit truth, will never be to kindle discord, to agitate or to 

 inflame. 



Above all, we trust that our Magazine will never be found a vehicle 

 for that low malignity that spirit of private detraction that base and 

 scandalous style of personal slander whether we treat on politics, lite- 

 rature, or education which is too prevailing a vice we regret to say 

 so of the present day- 



We desire here not to be mistaken. We set up no charge of per- 

 sonality ourselves ; nor acquiesce in any of the vulgar ones which, from 

 interested and obvious motives, have been attempted to be set 

 up, in some quarters, by other people. We object to no discussion, 

 however severe, of any man's public conduct. We see no crime in the 

 amplest canvas of his political or literary claims, nor to the freest 

 declaration of opinion upon them ; to the comment, in fact, upon any_ 

 thing, which a man's own act has brought before the public eye. But we 

 deprecate and detest the thought of pandering to an appetite, which 

 naturally rules to royalty among the bad, and which has an existence, 

 perhaps, even in the very best examples of human nature ; the search- 

 ing into private life for anecdotes and misfortunes, to feed the ear of 

 malice or unthinking curiosity with a species of attack against which the 

 most cautious man in society has no shield, and by which the most ho- 

 nourable and virtuous may be distressed, and made the butt of vulgar 

 insult. We trust, in the same way, that, in our general dissertations, we 

 shall ever be found to speak reverently of those authorities which custom 

 maintains and which, while they are maintained, he violates good 

 breeding who refuses his respect to. Our principle will be this, upon 

 every emergency that the course generally received is right, until it 

 shall be shewn that it is wrong ; and, whatever our differences may be, 

 for this we pledge ourselves to the utmost that they shall be managed 

 always in a spirit of courtesy, of fairness, and of liberality. 



Therefore, if we cannot convict those who think differently upon poli- 

 tical subjects from us, we hope to conciliate them ; if we do not get them 

 to read us, we at least hope for their candid construction and esteem. 



