Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy

Now, then, in mental retrospection, witness the unheard-of massacre that ensued! Behold the ruffians that invade the sacred abode, each bearing in his hand some exterminating weapon; in his eye, a more than fiend-like ferocity. Can it be you they seek, ye men of peace? unarmed, defenceless, and sanctuarised within the precincts of your own religious functions! – Incredible! —

Alas, no! – behold them reviled – chaced – assaulted. They demand their offence? They are answered by staves and pikes. They fly to the altar – to that altar where, so lately, salvation seemed to hang upon their benediction. —

Here, at least, are they not safe? At this sanctified spot will not some reverence revive? some devotion rekindle? Will not the fell instruments of destruction fall guiltless from the shaking hands of their contrite pursuers? Will not remorse seize their inmost souls, and vibrate through the hallowed habitation, in one universal cry of, "O men of God! live yet – so forgive – and pray for us!" – Ah, deadly shame! indelible disgrace! not here, not even here, could compunction or humanity find a friend —

"Would not those white hairs move pity?" —

No! – the murderers dart after them: the pious suppliants kneel – but they rise no more! They pray – and their prayers ascend to heaven, unheard on earth! Groans resound through the vaulted roof – Mangled carcases strew the consecrated ground – derided, while wounded; insulted, while slaughtered – they are cleft in twain – their savage destroyers joy in their cries – Blood, agony, and death close the fatal scene!

And ye, O ye who hear it, revere the immortal faith that, proof against this consummate barbarity, preferred its most baneful rage, to uttering one deviating word! And then, while your hearts bleed fresh with sympathy, will ye not call out, "O could they have been rescued! had pitying Heaven but spared the final blow, and, snatching them from their dread assassins, cast them, despoiled, forlorn, friendless, on this our happy isle, with what transport would we have welcomed and cherished them! sought balm for their lacerated hearts, and studied to have alleviated their exile, by giving to it every character of a second and endearing home. Our nation would have been honoured by affording refuge to such perfection; every family would have been blessed with whom such pilgrims associated; our domestics would have vied with each other to shew them kindness and respect; our poor would have contributed their mite to assist them; our children would have relinquished some enjoyment to have fed them!"

Let not reflection stop here, nor this merciful regret be unavailing: extend it a little farther, and mark the question to which it leads: can ye, wish this for those who are gone, and not practice it for those who remain? Sufferers in the same cause, bred in the same faith, and firm in the same principles; the banished men now amongst us would have shared a similar fate, if seized upon the same spot. Venerate them, then, O Christians of every denomination, as the representatives of those who have been slain; and let the same generous feeling which would call to life those murdered martyrs, protect their yet existing brethren, and save them, at every risk, and by every exertion, from an end as painful and more lingering; as unnatural, though less violent.

Come forth, then, O ye Females, blest with affluence! spare from your luxuries, diminish from your pleasures, solicit with your best powers; and hold in heart and mind that, when the awful hour of your own dissolution arrives, the wide-opening portals of heaven may present to your view these venerable sires, as the precursors of your admission.

FINIS

notes

1

The females of that miserable country whence these meritorious outcasts are driven, had the happiness, in former and better times, of exercising a charity as decisive for life or death as that which the females of Great Britain are now conjured to perform. St. Vincent de Paule, aumonier général des galeres, to whom France owes the chief of its humane establishments, instituted amongst the rest, the Foundling Hospital of Paris. His fund for its endowment failing, after repeated remonstrances for further general alms, which though not unsuccessful, proved insufficient, he gathered together a congregation of females, before whom he presented the innocent little objects of his prayers. His address to them was at once simple and sublime: "I call not upon you, he cried, as Christians, nor even as fellow creatures; I call upon you solely and singly to pronounce sentence as judges. To the largesses you have already bestowed, these orphans owe their natural existence: but those largesses are exhausted, and without a further supply, their existence is at an end. You are their judges – pronounce, then, their fate; do you ordain them to live? do you doom them to die?"

2

5000 French ecclesiastics live in Switzerland, 4000 in the ecclesiastical State, 15,000 in Spain, more than 20,000 in Germany, Holland, and the Austrian Netherlands; and shall 6000 be suffered to die in England?