NOTE A. 



THE FRENCH HUGUENOTS. 



" To gratify the lusts of power, princes have often encour- 

 aged the emigration of their subjects, in the hope of increasing 

 their wealth and multiplying their possessions. And individ- 

 uals, led on by an ambitious desire to improve their personal 

 fortunes, have abandoned the home of their fathers. But none 

 of these motives prompted our Protestant ancestors to leave 

 the delightful hills and valleys of their native France. They 

 were no instruments in the hands of ambitious princes for the 

 increase of their wealth and power. They did not seek a home 

 in America, through mere love of adventure, or the ordinary 

 inducements of pecuniary gain. Far nobler and higher were 

 the motives that actuated them. They came in search of an 

 asylum from the relentless persecution of a Catholic rule and 

 of a cruel government. They sought a home in which they 

 might enjoy, unmolested, the sweets of political and religious 

 liberty. They longed to bear away their altars and their faith to 

 a land of real freedom— a land allowing free scope to the ex- 

 ercise of conscience in the worship of their Maker. 



" The name of Huguenot is synonymous with patient endur- 

 ance, noble fortitude, and high religious purpose. Let us 

 then be glad that we, a portion of their descendants, are per- 

 mitted to meet, under the blessed light of liberty and religious 

 freedom won by them, to pay some imperfect tribute to mem- 

 ories so justly dear, and to remember their fidelity to posterity 

 and to God. In reverting to the period when a plain but high- 



171 



