The Newport Gazette

PARIS. December 6.

An excellent example of benevolence and true Christian fellow-feeling for the misfortunes of others, is worthy to be made public, but it may require the admiration it deserves:

The Bishop of Leicester, in whose diocese an epidemical disorder among the poorer sort raged to such a degree, as to ruin many, under the necessary regulations, established two funds at Paris, for the succour of the unfortunate, which are to be formed of the different sums of money, which any societies or private persons may supply them with, either as gifts or loans.

One has himself set a noble example, by presenting them with a gift of 30,000 livres, for the relief of the sick, and half that sum to that of the Jews. The pastoral letter which this Prelate has published to exhort those who have it in their power to second his project, does honour to the heart as certain as the head of that good man. He adds himself to every class of people separately, but to the Clergy in the following pathetic terms:

'Though thy duty of charity incumbent in every one blessed with affluence both by Nature and religion, yet it is doubly so in us, the Ministers of God, supported by the free gift of the people, who reap where we have not sown, and enjoy, notwithstanding the thickest blessings of Heaven, and live upon the fat of the land their labour gives us in the persons of their children, by restoring a part of his bounty to relieve those who have enriched us even at the expense of their poverty to those the fruit of whose labour we partake of, would be in you as well as in us, and in us as ministers of the Gospel, not only a piece of injustice, but a sacrilege; not only a piece of ingratitude, but a parricide, inviting the wrath of Heaven, and the abhorrence of mankind. Poverty uses in many cases man's rapine, to our shame be it spoken, or fit; but let us all unite to return it where it is due. This is not alone to hide from your left hand what your right hand does: your charity to be useful, must be public as the calamity is. Nor let us be afraid that the suspicion of pride will sully the merit of our offering.'