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    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.

Even your young daughters, whom maternal prudence has not yet furnished
with the means of bestowing, may be cheaply taught the first rudiments
of charity, together with an important lesson of economy: They may be
taught to sacrifice a feather, a set of ribbons, an expensive ornament,
an idle diversion. And if they are thus instructed, that there is no
true charity without self denial, they will _gain_ more than they are
called upon to _give_: For the suppression of one luxury for a
charitable purpose, is the exercise of two virtues, and this without any
pecuniary expense.

Let the sick and afflicted remember how dreadful it must be, to be
exposed to sufferings, without one of the alleviations which mitigate
_their_ affliction. How dreadful it is to be without comforts, without
necessaries, without a home--_without a country_! While the gay and
prosperous would do well to recollect, how suddenly and terribly those
for whom we plead, were, by the surprising vicissitudes of life, thrown
from equal heights of gaiety and prosperity. And let those who have
husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, or friends, reflect on the
uncertainties of war, and the revolution of human affairs. It is only by
imagining the possibility of those who are dear to us being placed in
the same calamitous circumstances, that we can obtain an adequate
feeling of the woes we are called upon to commiserate.

In a distress so wide and comprehensive, many are prevented from giving
by that common excuse--"That it is but a drop of water in the ocean."
But let them reflect, that if all the individual drops were withheld,
there would be no ocean at all; and the inability to give much ought
not, on any occasion, to be converted into an excuse for giving nothing.
Even moderate circumstances need not plead an exemption. The industrious
tradesman will not, even in a political view, be eventually a loser by
his small contribution. The money raised is neither carried out of our
country, nor dissipated in luxuries, but returns again to the community;
to our shops and to our markets, to procure the bare necessaries of
life.

Some have objected to the difference of _religion_ of those for whom we
solicit. Such an objection hardly deserves a serious answer. Surely if
the superstitious Tartar hopes to become possessed of the courage and
talents of the enemy he slays, the Christian is not afraid of catching,
or of propagating the error of the sufferer he relieves.--Christian
charity is of no party. We plead not for their faith, but for their
wants. And let the more scrupulous, who look for desert as well as
distress in the objects of their bounty, bear in mind, that if these men
could have sacrificed their conscience to their convenience, they had
not now been in this country. Let us shew them the purity of _our_
religion, by the beneficence of our actions.

If you will permit me to press upon you such high motives (and it were
to be wished that in every action we were to be influenced by the
highest) perhaps no act of bounty to which you may be called out, can
ever come so immediately under that solemn and affecting description,
which will be recorded in the great day of account--_I was a stranger
and ye took me in_.----




[Decoration]

_The following is an exact Translation from a_ SPEECH _made in the
National Convention at Paris, on Friday the 14th of December, 1792, in a
Debate on the Subject of establishing Public Schools for the Education
of Youth, by Citizen_ DUPONT, _a Member of considerable Weight; and as
the Doctrines contained in it were received with unanimous Applause,
except from two or three of the Clergy, it may be fairly considered as
an Exposition of the Creed of that Enlightened Assembly. Translated
from_ Le Moniteur _of Sunday the 16th of December, 1792_.

[Decoration]

What! Thrones are overturned! Sceptres broken! Kings expire! And yet the
Altars of GOD remain! (Here there is a murmur from some Members; and the
Abbe ICHON demands that the person speaking may be called to order.)
Tyrants, in outrage to nature, continue to burn an impious incense on
those Altars! (Some murmurs arise, but they are lost in the applauses
from the majority of the Assembly.) The Thrones that have been reversed,
have left these Altars naked, unsupported, and tottering. A single
breath of enlightened reason will now be sufficient to make them
disappear; and if humanity is under obligations to the French nation for
the first of these benefits, the fall of Kings, can it be doubted but
that the French people