Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/55

  upon them (besides the blessing that redounds from it) the nation is never the poorer, since it receives back by consumption as fast as it is given. With regard to the necessities of the actual petitioners, the Committee made enquiries as to their numbers, and as to their several qualities, ages, and callings, and reported that the numbers of old gentlemen and ministers, with their wives and children, also of widows and orphans, showed that there were 2460 persons worthy of the public charity of the nation. The House accordingly voted a grant of £15,000 per annum for the distressed French Protestants (£12,000 for the laity, and £3000 for the ministers), beginning on the 25th March 1696.

There is nothing in the subsequent statements of historical writers to contradict, or even to modify this account of the pedigree and birth of the annual £15,000. The remainder of their information concerns the payment of that annuity. And they complain that during the years 1696, 1697, and 1698 it was not paid in money; the Commissioners had to accept Exchequer bills, “remote tallies and malt tickets,” which being sold realised not £12,000, but only £5440, 10s. 2d. Then they lost a whole year’s income by the death of King William III., the warrant issued for that year having never been met by the government. During the best years of the reign of Queen Anne the money was regularly paid; but on the fall of Marlborough and Godolphin, with whom the vast majority of the refugees could not cease to sympathize, the enraged ministry of Harley and Bolingbroke stopped payment. This was in 1711, and Queen Anne lived until the 1st August 1714. The French Church of the Savoy, in London, at once sent a deputation to Hanover to congratulate King George, and to represent to the Baron de Hothmer and the Duke of Shrewsbury how “the late Queen’s ministry had most inhumanly deprived the French refugees for four years of the allowance [£15,000 per annum], which had been granted to them by Act of Parliament in the reign of King William, so that many of them had been reduced to a starving condition.” The deputation was very kindly received. On the new King’s establishment payments were resumed, and they continued at the same rate until the days of Sir Robert Walpole. Thus ends the historical head of my discourse.

The true state of the case (I am assured) contradicts what I have copied from historians as to the pedigree of the £15,000 of income, and shows it was not, in literal truth, a Parliamentary Grant at all. There was a Grant from the House of Commons of £1718, 4s. per annum, for the relief or better support of French pastors, to be distributed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and others. The grant is still paid without diminution (1869). It did not escape the criticisms of Mr. Joseph Hume in his place in Parliament. The Right Honourable George Robert Dawson, in reply to the veteran economist, very fully stated and proved the advantages of keeping open the French churches in question. They are used by French visitors and residents, both rich and poor, and prevent multitudes of the latter from being engulphed among the dangerous and unproductive classes of the population.

The Lay fund, according to my correspondent, was the interest of the sum of a quarter of a million, a capital fund, belonging to the French refugees themselves, having accumulated in the hands of their trustees. I have already spoken of the sums paid into the Chamber of the City of London. The total paid 2d May 1681 to 20th December 1695, amounted to £124.553, 4s. 2d. This sum was from collections in the churches, which, however, were not the only supply of means. Money was obtained (says Misson ) “partly by Brief, partly by Act of Parliament, and partly by the mere goodness and liberality of the King [William] and of the late Queen [Mary] of happy and glorious memory,” and was “always deposited in the hands of four or five noblemen, who have referred the division and administration thereof to a chosen set of men, picked out from among the refugees themselves, these being more Likely to know the necessities and cases of their countrymen than Englishmen possibly could be. These gentlemen are called the French Committee, or, in respect of the great Commissioners, the Little Committee.” We may take this statement as applicable to the beginning of the year 1696. And allowing, in addition to the £125,000 of unexpended balances, an equal sum for Parliamentary Grants and various 