"To do something to instruct, but more to undeceive, the timid and admiring student;-
to excite him to place more confidence in his own strength, and less in the infallibility of
great names;-to help him to emancipate his judgment from the shackles of authority;-to
teach him to distinguish between shewy language and sound sense; to warn him not to pay
himself with words; to shew him, that what may tickle the ear or dazzle the imagination, will
not always inform the judgment;-to dispose him rather to fast on ignorance than to feed
himself with error."

Fragment on Government.

Period.

1240

v. 13

1818

JANUARY TO DECEMBER INCLUSIVE.

1818.

VOLUME XIII.

DIVINITY SCHOOL
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY.

HACKNEY:

Printed for the Editor, by George Smallfield.

PUBLISHED BY SHERWOOD, NEELY AND JONES,

PATERNOSTER ROW.

PREFACE.

WE cannot close this Volume of the Monthly Repository without returning our thanks to the Friends of Truth and Free Inquiry, for the very liberal support which we have received from them during the past year. They have answered our appeal to their kindness with a readiness and cordiality which have established a lasting claim upon our gratitude, and which will impel us to study to render our work still more deserving of their patronage.

It is the Editor's first wish to render the Monthly Repository a complete Register of Facts, relating to the progress of public opinion and feeling, and to the great cause of Truth, Humanity and Freedom. By this means, the successive numbers of the work will not only gratify monthly curiosity, but also, as they gather into volumes, become a valuable deposit of information for after-times. In this view, he earnestly invites communications in the province of literary and religious history and biography.

On looking over the present Volume the reader will be gratified to observe so many proofs of the growth of liberal feelings and the extension of rational principles. We shall enter upon a new Volume with the confident expectation that these will multiply every year, and with the humble hope that this work may be instrumental in the promotion of moral, civil and religious Reformation, in which are involved the best interests of individuals and of communities, whether secular or spiritual.