Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/280

272 only recommended to them. Whereas we conceive, that all his majesty's subjects are equally obliged, with or without his majesty's commands, to promote works of charity according to their power; and that the clergy, in their ecclesiastical capacity, are only liable to such commands as the rubrick, or any other law, shall enjoin, being born to the same privileges of freedom with the rest of his majesty's subjects.

We cannot but observe to your grace, that, in the English act of the fourth year of queen Anne, for the better collecting charity money on briefs by letters patent, &c. the ministers are obliged only to read the briefs in their churches, without any particular exhortations; neither are they commanded to go from house to house with the churchwardens, nor to send the money collected to their respective chancellors, but pay it to the undertaker or agent of the sufferer. So that, we humbly hope, the clergy of this kingdom shall not without any law in being, be put to greater hardships in this case than their brethren in England; where the legislature, intending to prevent the abuses in collecting charity money on briefs, did not think fit to put the clergy under any of those difficulties we now complain of in the present brief by letters patents for the relief of Charles Carthy aforesaid.

The collections upon the Lord's day are the principal support of our own numerous poor in our several parishes; and therefore every single brief, with the benefit of a full collection over the whole kingdom, must deprive several thousands of poor of their weekly maintenance, for the sake only of one person, who often becomes a sufferer by his own folly or negligence, and is sure to overvalue his losses double or treble: so that, if this precedent be followed, as it Rh