"I must confess, Mr. Bickerstaff, if the making a man guilty of vices that would shame the gallows, be the best methods to point at the true object of raillery, I have until this time been very ignorant; but if it be so, I will venture to assert one thing, and lay it down as a maxim, even to the Staffian race, viz., that that method of pointing ought no more to be pursued, than those people ought to cut your throat who suffer by it, because I take both to be murder, and the law is not in every private man's hands to execute: but indeed, sir, were you the only person would suffer by the _Tatler's_ discontinuance, I have malice enough to punish you in the manner you prescribe; but I am not so great an enemy to the town or my own pleasures, as to wish it; nor that you would lay aside lashing the reigning vices, so long as you keep to the true spirit of satire, without descending to rake into characters below its dignity; for as you well observe, 'there is something very terrible in unjustly attacking men in a way that may prejudice their honour or fortune;' and indeed, where crimes are enormous, the delinquent deserves little pity, yet the reporter may deserve less: and here I am naturally led to that celebrated author of 'The Whole Duty of Man,' who hath set this matter in a true light in his treatise of 'The Government of the Tongue;'[191] where, speaking of uncharitable truths, he says, a discovery of this kind serves not to reclaim, but enrage the offender, and precipitate him into further degrees of ill. Modesty and fear of shame is one of those natural restraints, which the wisdom of heaven has put upon mankind; and he that once stumbles, may yet by a check of that bridle recover again: but when by a public detection he is fallen under that infamy he feared, he will then be apt to discard all caution, and to think he owes himself the utmost pleasures of vice, as the price of his reputation. Nay, perhaps he advances further, and sets up for a reversed sort of fame, by being eminently wicked, and he who before was but a clandestine disciple, becomes a doctor of impiety, &c. This sort of reasoning, sir, most certainly induced our wise legislators very lately to repeal that law which put the stamp of infamy in the face of felons; therefore you had better give an act of oblivion to your delinquents, at least for transportation, than continue to mark them in so notorious a manner. I cannot but applaud your designed attempt of raising merit from obscurity, celebrating virtue in distress, and attacking vice in another method, by setting innocence in a proper light. Your pursuing these noble themes, will make a greater advance to the reformation you seem to aim at, than the method you have hitherto taken, by putting mankind beyond the power of retrieving themselves, or indeed to think it possible. But if after all your endeavours in this new way, there should then remain any hardened impenitents, you must even give them up to the rigour of the law, as delinquents not within the benefit of their clergy. Pardon me, good Mr. Bickerstaff, for the tediousness of this epistle, and believe it is not from any self-conviction I have taken up so much of your time, or my own; but supposing you mean all your lucubrations should tend to the good of mankind, I may the easier hope your pardon, being,