NUMB. 19.[1]

FROM THURSDAY NOVEMBER 30, TO THURSDAY DECEMBER 7, 1710.

Quippe ubi fas versunt atque nefas:  tot bella per orbem:  Tam multae, scelerum facies——­[2]

I am often violently tempted to let the world freely know who the author of this paper is; to tell them my name and titles at length; which would prevent abundance of inconsistent criticisms I daily hear upon it.  Those who are enemies to the notions and opinions I would advance, are sometimes apt to quarrel with the “Examiner” as defective in point of wit, and sometimes of truth.  At other times they are so generous and candid, to allow, it is written by a club, and that very great hands have fingers in it.  As for those who only appear its adversaries in print, they give me but very little pain:  The paper I hold lies at my mercy, and I can govern it as I please; therefore, when I begin to find the wit too bright, the learning too deep, and the satire too keen for me to deal with, (a very frequent case no doubt, where a man is constantly attacked by such shrewd adversaries) I peaceably fold it up, or fling it aside, and read no more.  It would be happy for me to have the same power over people’s tongues, and not be forced to hear my own work railed at and commended fifty times a day, affecting all the while a countenance wholly unconcerned, and joining out of policy or good manners with the judgment of both parties:  this, I confess, is too great a hardship for so bashful and unexperienced a writer.[3]

But, alas, I lie under another discouragement of much more weight:  I was very unfortunate in the choice of my party when I set up to be a writer; where is the merit, or what opportunity to discover our wit, our courage, or our learning, in drawing our pens for the defence of a cause, which the Queen and both Houses of Parliament, and nine parts in ten of the kingdom, have so unanimously embraced?  I am cruelly afraid, we politic authors must begin to lessen our expenses, and lie for the future at the mercy of our printers.  All hopes now are gone of writing ourselves into places or pensions.  A certain starveling author who worked under the late administration, told me with a heavy heart, above a month ago, that he and some others of his brethren had secretly offered their service dog-cheap to the present ministry, but were all refused, and are now maintained by contribution, like Jacobites or fanatics.  I have been of late employed out of perfect commiseration, in doing them good offices:  for, whereas some were of opinion that these hungry zealots should not be suffered any longer in their malapert way to snarl at the present course of public proceedings; and whereas, others proposed, that they should be limited to a certain number, and permitted to write for their masters, in the same manner as counsel are assigned for other criminals; that is, to say all they can in defence