One of these gentlemen is since dead, the
Abbe Morangis. I pay this tribute, without reluctance, to the memory
of that noble, reverend, learned, and excellent person; and I should
do the same with equal cheerfulness to the merits of the others who, I
believe, are still living, if I did not fear to hurt those whom I am
unable to serve.
Some of these ecclesiastics of rank are by all titles persons
deserving of general respect. They are deserving of gratitude from
me and from many English. If this letter should ever come into their
hands, I hope they will believe there are those of our nation who feel
for their unmerited fall and for the cruel confiscation of their
fortunes with no common sensibility. What I say of them is a
testimony, as far as one feeble voice can go, which I owe to truth.
Whenever the question of this unnatural persecution is concerned, I
will pay it. No one shall prevent me from being just and grateful. The
time is fitted for the duty, and it is particularly becoming to show
our justice and gratitude when those who have deserved well of us
and of mankind are laboring under popular obloquy and the persecutions
of oppressive power.
You had before your Revolution about a hundred and twenty bishops.
A few of them were men of eminent sanctity, and charity without limit.
When we talk of the heroic, of course we talk of rare virtue.
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