Star. — 1816-05-24 (London, England)

XVIII. and what protection be had extended to li's subjects, they would have pursued a line of conduct so detestable as to support a Government to whom they wished well, by disguising the enormities which had been committrd. All he charged them with was credulity. They had too readily believed the false assurances which they had received. He was led by no party, by no political motive—be should only state the facts which had come to his knowledge: and after the active inquiries which he had made, the information which he had obtained from she places not distant from the seat of the enormities, and the conversations which he had held with persons who had_ been eye-witnesses on the spot, he ' thought that he could not have been deceived. Nei. ther did he believe that there was any danger in bringing the subject forward, nor that his 'motion would be fraught with mischievous consequences to the Protestants in France. Commanded and extorted letters from them had indeed deprecated British in. terference. But how had those been procured ? The Duke of Wellington's letter had been printed and ostentatiously published at Nismes by the French Government. It had filled the Protestant: with the deepest consternation. It had taken the last restraint away from the persecutors—it had extinguished the last hope of the persecuted. Was it Fr isible that they should be still worse treated because their brethren of Great Britain took interest in their fate ; at lower animals on whom their master revenges himself for the sympathy expressed by strangers in their behalf ? He thought, on the contrary, that his motion would do them good, and that British interference had even hitherto not been entirely useless. The subject would resolve itself into three branches : First, Had those murders and enormities been corn.fmbeeronp. o mined or not ? Secondly, Did they spring lineal or religious causes ? Aad, thirdly, Had the French Government afforded due protection to the rights of all its subject: ? It was impossible to give an adequate idea of all the transactions which had taken place in the Department of the Gard, for with the exception of small districts of the adjoining Departments, the persecution of the Protestants was confined to the Department of the Gard. Before he shodld enter into details, it would be necessary for him to put the House in possession of the situation in which the Protestants stood in that part of France at the restoration of the present King. The Department of the Gard was composed of the provinces of • Languedoc, Provence, and'the mountains of the Cevennes. it was the birth-place of the Reformed Religion. There its doctrines had first displayed themIselves, centuries before the Reformation had begun in other parts of Europe. The Vaudois (Waldenses)  , . .  ...m•  .  illi...144.1•••••4••••••=••••••••••• were inhibitants of the Cevennes. After the Reformation, a communication had taken place between them and the followers of Luther. It was then that blond was shed. The Parliament of Aix undertook to punish the Heretics, and its 'President, Daugay, and the Advocate-General, 3beriii, signalized their zeal by desolating those countries. Thin first ap--, peered those.massecres in the name of religion which afterwards spread over the world in the wars with the Hngonets and the horrible hatchery of St. Bartholomew..•thieler King Henry IV. the Protestants en. roved all their rights. They resorted chiefly to Nem s, which then almost contained a majority of Proteetart population.' In 1685 came the revocation, of the Edict of Nantes. through the, superstition of Louie