Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French ClergyBurney, Fanny
History
Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy
Burney, Fanny
Clergy -- France; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Religious aspects; French -- Great Britain
The astonishing period of political history upon which our days have
fallen, robs all former times of wonder, wearies expectation, sickens
even hope! while the occurrences of every passing minute have such
prevalence over our minds, that public affairs assume the interest of
private feelings, affect domestic peace, and occupy not merely the most
retired part of mankind, but even mothers, wives, and children with
solicitude irresistible.
Yet the amazement which has been excited, though stupendous, though
terrific, by the general events that in our neighbour kingdom have
convulsed all order, and annihilated tranquility, is feeble, is almost
null, compared with that produced by the living contrast of virtue and
of guilt exhibited in the natives of one and the same country; virtue,
the purest and most disinterested, emanating from the first best cause,
religion; and guilt, too heinous for any idea to which we have hitherto
given definition.
The emigrant FRENCH CLERGY, who present us with the bright side of this
picture, are fast verging to a situation of the most necessitous
distress; and, notwithstanding the generous collections repeatedly
raised, and the severest oeconomy unremittingly exercised in their
distribution, if something further is not quickly obtained, all that has
been done will prove of no avail, and they must soon end their hapless
career, not by paying the debt of nature, but by famine.
That the kingdom at large, in its legislative capacity, will ere long
take into consideration a more permanent provision for these pious
fugitives, there is every reason to infer from the national interest,
which has universally been displayed in their cause. To preserve them in
the mean time is the object of present application.
So much has already so bountifully been bestowed in large donations,
that it seems wanting in modesty, if not in equity, to make further
immediate demands upon heads of houses, and masters of families.
Which way, then, may these destitute wanderers turn for help? To their
own country they cannot go back; it is still in the same state of
lawless iniquity which drove them from it, still under the tyrannic sway
of the sanguinary despots of the Convention.
What then remains? Must their dreadful hardships, their meek endurance,
their violated rights, terminate in the death of hunger?
No! there is yet a resource; a resource against which neither modesty
nor equity plead; a resource which, on the contrary, has every moral
propensity, every divine obligation, in its favour: this resource is
FEMALE BENEFICENCE.
Already a considerable number of Ladies have stept forward for this
Christian purpose. Their plan has been printed and dispersed. It speaks
equally to the heart and to the understanding; it points out
wretchedness which we cannot dispute, and methods for relief of which
we cannot deny the feasibility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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