ence, and
whom the imprudence and misfortunes of others have been incapable of
rendering cautious or discreet.

With encountering these, and many other objections (the offspring of
indistinct conception and cold hearts) the projectors of the present
work lay their account; yet, since nothing honourable or arduous would
ever be accomplished, if hope were to be extinguished by partial defeat,
and a generous enterprise were to be abandoned, because it had before
been tried without success, the work now proposed is undertaken, with
the most firm conviction of its utility and the most unequivocal
confidence of success. Let their difficulties be what they may, however,
the editors are prepared to meet them, not only without fear, but with
satisfaction; since they know that nothing but impossibility will be
refused to undismayed perseverance and unremitting industry, and that in
the work they are entering upon, they labour for the promotion of a
purpose which, whatever the amount of their pecuniary advantage may be,
will entitle them to public respect and to the gratitude of the rising
generation. Before such proud hopes, all the little obstructions they
anticipate--the cavils of the scrupulous, the doubts of the sceptical,
the reluctance of the timid, the resistance of the refractory and
incorrigible, and the sneers, the censures, and the sarcasms of the
curious and the malignant vanish, as the gloomy chills and shades of the
night recede before the glorious luminary of the morning.

That the drama is a most powerful moral agent in society has been
admitted by men of learning and wisdom in all ages of its existence.
Whether its effects be, on the whole, injurious or not, will long be a
subject of contest; but be they what they may, it can have very little
influence of any kind beyond that of harmless amusement, on the wise,
the pious, the learned and the experienced. Were those alone to visit
theatres and be exposed to its allurements, the task of the dramatic
censor might without injury be dispensed with: but since it is the
young, the idle, the thoughtless, and the ignorant, on whom the drama
can be supposed to operate as a lesson for conduct, an aid to experience
and a guide through life, and since such persons are generally
unfurnished with ideas and undefended by principles, prompt to receive
first impressions, and easily susceptible of false opinions and
pernicious sentiments, it becomes a matter of great importance to