PREFACE TO THE NINTH VOLUME. 



AT the commencement of a new year, the Proprietors of the MONTHLY 

 MAGAZINE address the Public with a highly gratified feeling of the general 

 and effective reception which its principles have experienced throughout 

 the British Empire. 



We shall not now more than allude to the peculiar bias of the MONTHLY 

 MAGAZINE under its original proprietorship. It is of higher importance to 

 observe, that having fallen into our hands, it has totally flung away all that 

 seemed erroneous in its earlier spirit, and has since been emulous only of 

 being distinguished among the foremost defenders of the Crown, the Constitu- 

 tion, and the Religion of the Empire. 



This change took place at a time when there might have been strong 

 temptations to the contrary when every art was adopted to mislead or fetter 

 the public mind when a formidable attack on the British Constitution was 

 meditated, and the first object was to intimidate the public writers of the 

 country. 



It is now unnecessary to say how far those purposes succeeded. But we 

 have the right to say, that we looked on the crisis only as a summons to more 

 active vigilance, and more vigorous exertion ; that we felt the general decay 

 of honour, only as an evidence of the stronger necessity for the most open 

 declaration of British principle \ and that the sudden apostacy even of the 

 highest ranks, only excited our deeper abhorrence, and more fearless appeal 

 to the remaining integrity of the British mind. 



For the proof of this service, we 'refer to the whole of our last year's publi- 

 cation. From what public question did we shrink ? What official delusion 

 did we suffer to go undetected? What instance of tergiversation let the 

 culprit be who he might did we leave undevoted to national scorn ? What 

 open, prompt, and honourable hostility did we not array against the breakers- 

 down, and the breach, of the Constitution ? 



A ruinous and hated measure was brought forward, first with the subtlest 

 artifice, next with the most daring scorn. We resisted it from the beginning. 

 We would have crushed the serpent in the egg. We as unhesitatingly assailed 

 it, when it had swelled into portentous venom and magnitude, and seemed 

 rising to wrap in its spirals the civil and religious liberties of England. What 

 we have done, we shall do still. We look upon the " Catholic Question" 

 as an enormous political folly if it do not assume the deeper dye of an 

 enormous political crime. But its history is not to be terminated by its record 

 on the books of Parliament. Out of that measure a teeming harvest will 

 spring. Political treachery, popular weakness, sullen superstition, and 

 fierce Jacobinism, have already followed each other's footsteps, and sown 

 each their portion over the field : the time of ripening will rapidly come, and 

 with it the sternest trial that can try the stren llof empires. 



M.M. New Series VOL. IX. No. 49. B 



