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 ground-work 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.

With these views then We commence our undertaking. Whatever may be the success, or the merit of its execution in our hands ;-the want of something like it has so long been felt and deplored by all thinking and honest men, that We cannot doubt of the approbation and encouragement with which the attempt will be received.

We

We claim the support, and We invite the assistance, of ALL, who think with us that the circumstances and character of the age in which We live require every ex-' ertion of every man, who loves his COUNTRY in the old way, in which till of late years the LOVE of one's COUNTRY was professed by most men, and by none disclaimed or reviled; of ALL who think that the PRESS has been long enough employed principally as an engine of destruction; and who wish to see the experiment fairly tried whether that engine by which many of the States which surround us have been overthrown, and others shaken to their foundations, may not be turned into an instrument of defence for the ONE remaining COUNTRY, which has ESTABLISHMENTS to protect, and a GOVERNMENT with the spirit, and the power, and the wisdom to protect them;-of ALL who look with respect to public honour, and with attachment to the decencies of private life;of ALL who have so little deference for the arrogant intollerance of JACOBINISM as still to contemplate the OFFICE and the PERSON of a KING with veneration, and to speak reverently of RELIGION, without apologizing for the singularity of their opinions ;-of ALL who think the blessings which we enjoy valuable, and who think them in danger ;-and who, while they détest and despise the principles and the professors of that NEW FAITH by which the foundations of all those blessings are threatened to be undermined, lament the lukewarmness with which its propagation has hitherto been resisted, and are anxious, while there is yet time, to make every effort in the cause of their COUNTRY.

THE

THE

ANTI-JACOBIN;

OR,

WEEKLY EXAMINER.

N° I.-MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1797.

Ob England! model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty beart,—

What might'st thou do, that honour would thee do,
Were all thy children kind and natural !

SHAKSPEARE. KING HENRY V.

INTRODUCTION.

IN presenting our First Paper to the Public, and in

preparing to execute that part of our Plan which consists in the assembling and refuting the Falsehoods of the Week, we have found one Difficulty in our way, of which we might indeed, and perhaps ought, to have been aware It is, that many or most of the Misrepresentations which are obtruded upon our daily notice, have their root and foundation in lies of older dates; which either from the circumstance of their never having received a decisive contradiction, or, by dint of being impudently repeated after it, have obtained a sort of prescriptive credit, and are referred to upon all occasions, as if established beyond dispute. It will be necessary, therefore, in many instances, for the complete confutation of modern Falsehoods, to trace them diligently and patiently

tiently to their origin; and not only to dam up the current, but to cut off the source.

There is perhaps scarcely any point of importance that can come under our consideration, upon which there are not now wandering about the world, mis-statements so gross, and fallacies so glaring, that one wonders how it is possible they should ever have found reception and entertainment for a moment. Many of them, however, are become so familiar to the Public, that they are constantly, and without shame, appealed to by the Jacobins, and are even by many well-meaning persons often admitted, not only as true in themselves, but as the test and standard whereby the probability of other assertions is to be estimated.

The contest in which we are now engaged, WE know to have been, on our part, juft and necessary in its origin; and to have been continued in all its stages by the obstinate animosity of the enemy. We know that we have no option left for terminating it with safety, but that of vigorous and determined exertion.

This war, however, we shall find, according to the unqualified assumption of the Jacobin Journals, to have owed its origin to something that they are pleased to call the Conspiracy of Pilnitz; we shall find that its continuance is to be attributed solely to our ambition and desire of aggrandizement; and that its conclusion is at any moment in our own power, and has been twice prevented, merely by our stubborn refusal to speak out as to the terms and the mode of accommodation.

Concerning the nature and the effects of that tremendous REVOLUTION, which has shaken Europe to its centre-which has confounded all things human and divine, and has worked, and is working, changes in the moral

world,