Transcriber’s Note
The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved.
EARNESTLY SUBMITTED
TO THE HUMANE CONSIDERATION
OF THE
LADIES OF GREAT BRITAIN.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
EVELINA AND CECILIA.
London:
PRINTED BY T. DAVISON,
FOR THOMAS CADELL, IN THE STRAND.
1793.
[Price one Shilling and Sixpence.]
⁂ The profits of this Publication are to be wholly
appropriated to the Relief of the
EMIGRANT FRENCH CLERGY.
However wide from the allotted boundaries and appointed province ofFemales may be all interference in public matters, even in the agitatingseason of general calamity; it does not thence follow that they areexempt from all public claims, or mere passive spectatresses of themoral as well as of the political œconomy of human life. The distinctties of their prescriptive duties, which, pointed out by Nature, havebeen recognised by reason, and established by custom, remove, indeed,from their view and knowledge all materials for forming public[Pg iv]characters. The privacy, therefore, of their lives is the dictate ofcommon sense, stimulated by local discretion. But in the doctrine ofmorality the reverse is the case, and their feminine deficiencies arethere changed into advantages: since the retirement, which divests themof practical skills for public purposes, guards them, at the same time,from the heart-hardening effects of general worldly commerce. It givesthem leisure to reflect and to refine, not merely upon the virtues, butthe pleasures of benevolence; not only and abstractedly upon that senseof good and evil which is implanted in all, but feelingly, nay awefully,upon the woes they see, yet are spared!
It is here, then, in the cause of tenderness and humanity, they may come[Pg v]forth, without charge of presumption, or forfeiture of delicacy.Exertions here may be universal, without rivality or impropriety; thehead may work, the hand may labour; the heart may suggest,indiscriminately in all, in men without disdain, in women without ablush: and however truly of the latter to withdraw from notice may be ingeneral the first praise, in a service such as this, they may with yetmore dignity come forward: for it is here that their purest principles,in union with their softest feelings, may blend immediate gratificationwith the most solemn future hopes.——And it is here, in fullpersuasion of sympathy as well as of pardon, that the Author of theselines ventures to offer to her countrywomen a short exhortation infavour of the emigrant French Clergy.
The astonishing period of political history upon which our days havefallen, robs all former times of wonder, wearies expectation, sickenseven hope! while the occurrences of every passing minute have suchprevalence over our minds, that public affairs assume the interest of[Pg BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!
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