ever 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
atte