106 flower's barrow. 



"Sir, 



You have told Mr. Weld, that Counsellor Bond had 

 been informed that our House enclosed suspected Persons, I am, Sir, 

 impressed with the most entire conviction, that neither you, nor the 

 respectable gentleman just mentioned, annex the smallest credit,' to so 

 wretched a report; but it is a duty, that I owe to myself, it is a duty 

 that I owe to those who live under my direction, to obviate even the 

 shadow of suspicion. This, I will undertake to accomplish by a precise 

 exhibition of the principles, and characters of the persons of whom our 

 Society is composed. Submission then, the most implicit, to our spi- 

 ritual, and to the temporal authorities, in addition to a respect, fidelity, 

 and attachment to those, in whom those authorities are vested, consti- 

 tute equally the basis of our religious, and political opinions; and 

 whoever would hold principles opposite to these, should not be admited 

 into our Community. With respect. Sir, to the persons of whom this 

 Community is composed, they may be distinguished in three distinct 

 classes, the first consisting of Clergymen or French Emigrants, the 

 second of a small number of Englishmen, and the third is almost 

 entirely the growth of Ireland. With respect to our French brethren, I 

 presume that any apology would be absolutely superfluous; our senti- 

 ments arc too generally known to render an elucidation necessary ; and 

 it is for our unshaken fidelity to our religion and our Kings, that we 

 have abandoned our possessions and our families, and rent asunder those 

 ties most precious to the heart of man, to encounter the rigors of a 

 tedious exile. Dispositions, in which we have uniformly persevered 

 during a period of twenty years, cannot be justly regarded by our Go- 

 vernors, as objects of suspicion. We know, because we have experienced, 

 the horrors of civil anarchy, of which we are the victims; and if any 

 persons can be prompted by feeling, by circumstance, and inclination, 

 to proclaun these horrors, and to urge a dutiful submission to the con- 

 stituted powers, I and my Brethren are undoubtedly the persons. But 

 independently of the motives which are suggested to us by the circum- 

 stances, to which I have adverted; independently of the motives which 

 flow from the influence of Religion, (which must be everything to men 

 professedhj religious,) gratitude alone is sufficient to attach us to the 

 Government of England, with a fidelity unwarpt, unshaken, and 

 perpetual. ^England is to us another native land, we have experienced 

 in it that hospitality, which we have lost for ever in our own; long 

 residence in it, has mellowed our attachment to it, into filial love; and 

 we feel that our existence, our peace, and our tranquility, are essen- 

 tially connected with the existence, the peace, and the stability of the 

 Government imder which we have the happiness to live. 



"With relation to the few Englishmen to be found in our Community, 

 as, from the paucity of their number, and their attachment to their na- 

 tive Country, they cannot reasonably be regarded as objects of suspicion; 

 to repel such a charge from them, would be equally superfluous and 

 unnecessarv. 



