Mirabeau is a fine speaker--and a fine writer,--and a fine--a very
fine man;--but really nothing gave more surprise to everybody here, than
to find him the supreme head of your ecclesiastical affairs. The rest is
of course. Your Assembly addresses a manifesto to France, in which they
tell the people, with an insulting irony, that they have brought the
church to its primitive condition. In one respect their declaration is
undoubtedly true; for they have brought it to a state of poverty and
persecution. What can be hoped for after this? Have not men (if they
deserve the name), under this new hope and head of the church, been made
bishops for no other merit than having acted as instruments of atheists;
for no other merit than having thrown the children's bread to dogs; and
in order to gorge the whole gang of usurers, pedlars, and itinerant
Jew-discounters at the corners of streets, starved the poor of their
Christian flocks, and their own brother pastors? Have not such men been
made bishops to administer in temples, in which (if the patriotic
donations have not already stripped them of their vessels) the
churchwardens ought to take security for the altar-plate, and not so
much as to trust the chalice in their sacrilegious hands, so long as
Jews have assignats on ecclesiastic plunder, to exchange for the silver
stolen from churches?
DELICACY.
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