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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