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and make criminal Excursions, yet when they are attack'd, they retreat behind the Fences and Fortifications of the conjugal Laws, and the Letter of Matrimony is turn'd against the Meaning of it, as the Cannon of a Bastion, when the Work is taken, are turn'd against the Town which they were mounted to defend.
Satyr can scourge where the Lash of the Law cannot; the Teeth and Talons of the Pen will bite and tear, and the Satyr has a Sting which is made for the Correction of such Of fences and such Offenders as bully Justice, and think themselves out of the reach of Prisons and Punishments; as small Arms are of use in Battle where the Cannon and Mortars cannot play, and the Point of the Lance can wound where the Balls cannot fly.
If Men are fenc'd against one Thing, they may not be fenc'd against another, and the sense of Shame may restrain where even a sense of Punishment will not. There are Crimes which a lash of the Pen reach'd when a lash at the Cart's-tail would not; and a time when Men that have laugh'd at the Law, and ridiculed all its Powers, have yet been laugh'd out of their Crimes by a just Satyr, and brought to the necessity of hanging themselves for Shame, or reforming to prevent it.
If then the Crime be evident, and yet the Law impotent, who will contend that the Satyr is not just? 'Tis the only unexceptionable Case in which not the Justice only, but the Necessity of a Satyr, is to be insisted on.
Some will say, and in this particular Case I think they are right, that there is no such thing as an unjust Satyr; that a Satyr is never wrong, or can be so; for that,
I. If
