Excerpt from The Scourge, Vol. 5: Or Monthly Expositor of Imposture and Folly

On completing our fifth volume we feel ourselves called upon, not so much by custom as gratitude, to the renewal of our former pledges, and to make our obeisance to our friends who have so cheeringly invited us to a continuance of our labours by a support as liberal as it is grateful to our private feelings. Uninfluenced by party prejudice, unbiassed by private resentment, our strictures have been directed to the wholesome castigation of vice, and to the support of the cause of virtue: in this cause we feel that we have deserved public favor, and without incurring the charge of egotism, or of vain boasting, we trust we shall be permitted to say that our future conduct will be such as has characterized our later numbers, and which appears, by our increasing sale, to have obtained for us the approbation of our readers. It will be distinguished by good humour, and an extra portion of playful satire, by the exposure of imposture, and the correction of folly. We may venture to cut beyond the wound in the former case, but in the latter, where it is harmless, we shall consider the manner with more anger than the man. In personal satire we shall not relax, but are prepared to meet the charges of malignity, or of libeller, to pluck up by the roots the corruption of modern times, or restrain the vices of the depraved, by singling him out as the Cain of the land, the object of merited detestation, but let the man of worth, or the woman of virtue, approach us with confidence: we will engrave their names on the page of honor, on the tablets of truth and memory, and their failings point out with respect and delicacy.

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