Produced by Chris Curnow, Carla Foust, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net CONSIDERATIONS ON RELIGION AND PUBLIC EDUCATION, WITH REMARKS ON THE _SPEECH_ OF _M. DUPONT_, DELIVERED IN THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF FRANCE. TOGETHER WITH AN ADDRESS TO THE LADIES, &c. OF _GREAT BRITAIN and IRELAND_. [Decoration] BY HANNAH MORE. FIRST _AMERICAN_ EDITION. PRINTED AT _BOSTON_, BY WELD AND GREENOUGH. SOLD at the MAGAZINE OFFICE, No. 49, State Street. MDCCXCIV. [Decoration] A PREFATORY ADDRESS TO THE LADIES, &c. of GREAT BRITAIN and IRELAND, IN BEHALF OF THE FRENCH EMIGRANT CLERGY. [Decoration] If it be allowed that there may arise occasions so extraordinary, that all the lesser motives of delicacy ought to vanish before them; it is presumed that the present emergency will in some measure justify the hardiness of an Address from a private individual, who, stimulated by the urgency of the case, sacrifices inferior considerations to the ardent desire of raising further supplies towards relieving a distress as pressing as it is unexampled. We are informed by public advertisement, that the large sums already so liberally subscribed for the Emigrant Clergy, are almost exhausted. Authentic information adds, that multitudes of distressed Exiles in the island of Jersey, are on the point of wanting bread. Very many to whom this address is made have already contributed. O let them not be weary in well-doing! Many are making generous exertions for the just and natural claims of the widows and children of our brave seamen and soldiers. Let it not be said, that the present is an _interfering_ claim. Those to whom I write, have bread enough, and to spare. You, who fare sumptuously every day, and yet complain you have little to bestow, let not this bounty be subtracted from another bounty, but rather from some superfluous expense. The beneficent and right minded want no arguments to be pressed upon them; but I write to those of every description. Luxurious habits of living, which really furnish the distressed with the fairest grounds for application, are too often urged as a motive for withholding assistance, and produced as a plea for having little to spare. Let her who indulges such habits, and pleads such excuses in consequence, reflect, that by retrenching _one_ costly dish from her abundant table, the superfluities of _one_ expensive desert, _one_ evening's public amusement, she may furnish at least a week's subsistence to more than one person,[A] as liberally bred perhaps as herself, and who, in his own country, may have often tasted how much more blessed it is to give than to receive--to a minister of God, who has been long accustomed to bestow the necessaries he is now reduced to solicit.