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.  I believe the instances of eminent depravity may be as rare amongst them as those of transcendent goodness.  Examples of avarice and of licentiousness may be picked out, I do not question it, by those who delight in the investigation which leads to such discoveries.  A man as old as I am will not be astonished that several, in every description, do not lead that perfect life of self-denial, with regard to wealth or to pleasure, which is wished for by all, by some expected, but by none exacted with more rigor than by those who are the most attentive to their own interests or the most indulgent to their own passions.  When I was in France, I am certain that the number of vicious prelates was not great.  Certain individuals among them, not distinguishable for the regularity of their lives, made some amends for their want of the severe virtues in their possession of the liberal, and wore endowed with qualities which made them useful in the Church and State.  I am told, that, with few exceptions, Louis the Sixteenth had been more attentive to character, in his promotions to that rank, than his immediate predecessor; and I believe (as some spirit of reform has prevailed through the whole reign) that it may be true.  But the present ruling power has shown a disposition only to plunder the Church.  It has punished all prelates:  which is to favor the vicious, at least in point of reputation.  It has made a degrading pensionary establishment, to which no man of liberal ideas or liberal condition will destine his children.  It must settle into the lowest classes of the people.  As with you the inferior clergy are not numerous enough for their duties, as these duties are beyond measure minute and toilsome, as you have left no middle classes of clergy at their ease, in future nothing of science or erudition can exist in the Gallican Church.  To complete the project, without the least attention to the rights of patrons, the Assembly has provided