Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

lation we all bear to one common Father, who formed us all of the same clay, and has made one vessel to honour and another to dishonour; thereby plainly pointing out to us the proper use of those superior blessings of power or riches, which any of us enjoy above the rest of our fel low-creatures; that our wealth should flow down in streams of beneficence to the poor and indigent, and our power be employed in protecting the helpless and miserable; and this without distinction; since we are all sons of the same Father, who hath appointed us to such several stations and conditions in life, as may best answer the wise and gracious designs of his providence.

[ocr errors]

Under this view then of the nature and extent of the duty of benevolence, I need not, I trust, use many arguments in favour of those unhappy objects, who have this day been so strongly recommended to your compassion from the throne. For surely there is nothing wanting in their situation, which can excite the sympathy of every generous and feeling heart.-Driven from their native land by a barbarous and savage proscription,-torn from every thing that was dear and valuable in life,-they have been compelled to throw themselves under the protection of the well-known generosity of Britons, and to seek an asylum in this land of genuine liberty

and

and legal security. And to the honour of this land be it spoken, they have not been disappointed in the well-grounded expectations they had formed. The public liberality has been in a wonderful manner extended to them, and at the same time has been conducted with so much caution and prudence, as to alleviate their distresses, for a much longer time than, considering the greatness of their number, could well have been supposed. But the contributions, which have hitherto been chiefly confined to the metropolis, now beginning to fail, our gracious Sovereign hath thought it expedient to extend the scale of liberality, and to call upon all his subjects to lend a helping hand to forward this labour of love. Suffer me therefore to second his benevolent intention, by recommending to your compassion this great and venerable body of men. It is true, they are aliens to us by birth, they differ from us in religious opinions, they are sprung from a nation, from which we have ever experienced the greatest perfidy and most determined hostility. But the mercy of the Gospel overleaps all these partial distinctions, and, regarding the necessities and not the opinions of men, commands us to do good unto all men. And indeed, however these unhappy persons. may on this ground of Christian charity justly claim our assistance, yet they have other cir

[blocks in formation]

cumstances also, which plead strongly in their favour. They are all of them men of liberal education they have all of them devoted their lives to the service of God, under the strict and rigorous rules of discipline and austerity, in which the church of Rome enjoins to all her ecclesiastical members. They are many of them venerable for their age, and most of them for the integrity and sanctity of their morals. They have been reduced from a state of competency, and some of them from a state of affluence, to seek their bread in a strange land, and much the greater part of them even without a tongue to make . their wants known to the ear of the compassionate. And this they suffer not from any crime or default of their own, but from the tyranny of the worst and basest faction that ever disgraced the human character. They suffer it, because they refused to take oaths, which were directly contrary to their consciences, and to the principles they had ever maintained. They suffer it, because they refused to acknowledge the authority of a faction, which had established itself by a complication of nefarious and unheard of villanies; a faction, which had plundered the temples of God, had trampled religion under foc, had set up the standard of open infidelity, had bid defiance to every principle of order, law, and justice; a faction, which treated the whole

7

whole of the royal family with an insolence and wantonness of cruelty in history unparalleled, and finally embrùed their hands in the blood of one of the best monarchs that ever ascended the Gallic throne.

Surely then these unhappy men, who, from an unshaken regard to principles of loyalty and religion, sacrificed every thing that was dear to them, and preferred nakedness and poverty to a servile compliance with the dishonourable terms required of them by a detestable faction, deserve every mark of regard from those, who have any love for their religion or their country.

I need not, therefore, plead for them. Your own generous hearts will make their case your own, and induce you to do to them, what, in similar circumstances, you would wish that men should do unto you. And should it please divine Providence ever to suffer these unhappy men to return to their native country, sure I am that they will return to it with hearts overflowing with gratitude, and with the most exalted ideas of British generosity; and I will farther add, that the kindness which they have here experienced will contribute more to remove their prejudices against the religion we profess, than the strongest arguments which have ever been

produced

produced by the best advocates for the protestant cause: for it must strike the hearts of every one of them with a resistless force, that that religion can never be a bad one, which produces so liberally the genuine fruits of disinterested love and unlimited compassion to the distressed members of a church, which, for ages past, has been denouncing anathemas against us, as a race of heretics not within the pale of salvation, and fit only to be extirpated from off the face of the earth.

FINIS

Printed by Bye and Law, St. John's Square.

« FöregåendeFortsätt »