will authorize it to raise the thirtieth horfe in every part of the republic. Experience affures, the success of this measure; all others will only have doubtful confequences, flow, and attended with much expence, and the sending out a prodigious quantity of specie. The directory had determined not to make to the legislative body the propofition of an extraordinary levy of horfes till after the fubject had been long confidered, and it shall be fenfible that there exist no other means of affuring the service. This levy shall be made by the adminiftrative bodies. The legiflative body may itself state the mode of the execution, or leave it to the directory, who will follow the most economical and the leaft vexatious to the citizens; whatever decifion you may make in this respect, circumstances require that this measure may not be deferred. Citizens legiflators, the directory invites the council to take the object of its demand into the most serious and the most prompt confideration. REUBELL, President. Message of the Executive Directory CITIZENS LEGISLATORS, YOUR refolution of the zoth of this month relative to the creation of "Territorial Mandats," payable to the bearer, is one of those grand and appy measures, which at the most critical æras of the revolution, have operated to the welfare of the republic. But it would be fatal if you did not haften to make an addition which is indispensable, by giving to those mandats a com pulfive currency. Without fuch a law, the new paper and the old would both fall into equal depreciation. The stock jobbers would seize upon both, they would plunder the nation of its demesnes, and the government of its resources. Certainly when paper money has but a remote, a doubtful, or infufficient security, nothing short of despotism can force its currency. Such would be the cafe, if it were intended to recal the affignats to their nominal value, before their mass was reduced to the amount of the national property at the dispofal of government. But it would be a weak abandonment of the rights of the people, to leave to malignity and avarice to fix the value of a mandat, which can be immediately converted into real property at the choice of the bearer, amongst the best poffeffions of the republic. The citizens may be deceived as to their real interests by the cruel manœuvres of stockjobbing. They have been deceived, and will be so still, unless their representatives föresee and warn them of the danger. Have you not been compelled to pronounce certain penalties against those who refused the republican money, though it was evidently of more value than that which bore the royal stamp? Why should you hesitate to take the fame part against those who may wish to depreciate a paper, which has more need of confidence, as it is not divisible into small portions, and therefore less fitted for ordinary transactions? If you do not take this step, this paper musft fall, and with its own, will infallibly cause the ruin of the affignats. It is in your power, on the contrary, to raise the one through the other, and to breathe thus new life through all the ramifications of the bodv politic, robust in itself, but weakened and dried up through the want of circulation. There are those, however, who seem to descry in this paper the annihilation of the affignats. This is an error to which stock-jobbers will labour to give credit, as withing to monopolize this representative fign, and to possess themselves of the public fortune. But it is evident, that, on the contrary, ftockjobbing will find its death in the compulfive circulation of this paper, and that in twenty-four hours the government will triple the value of affignats. The affignat is now at the three hundredth part of its nominal value. When the mandats shall be at par with money, the affignats are to be exchanged at every office in the republic for the hundredth part of their nominal rate. Thus is their value tripled. In a word, the affignats thus exchanged are to be burned, until there thall be no more than 3 milliards in circulation. The circulation will then be brought back to its usual course, and the paper to its natural proportion to the land which it represents. The mandat being on a par with money, and the relation of the affignats with the former being prescribed by the laws, stockjobbing can no longer maintain its ground. It dies; and France is delivered from a scourge more horrible than all the inflictions of her combined enemies! This proportion of one to an hundred between the mandat and the affignat appears to be more fuit able for the present. It accords with the measures which have been taken for raising the forced loan. It leaves to the nation the resources which may be necessary for its occafions, until the system of contribution shall be settled, and the receipts collected regularly. In proportion as the circulating mass of affignats thall be diminished by burning those which are exchanged, the relative value of one hundred for one may be gradually ameliorated until the equilibrum shall be restored without any shock between the remaining affignats and the demesnes which form their security. But it is necessary for this purpose, that severe penalties shall be decreed against those who attempt to make the smallest alteration in the relative value of republican money. Those who exchange mandats against money otherwise than at par, must be rigoroufly punished. It was by relaxing from this effential point that affignats have fallen into their present state of depreciation, and that it is impossible to raise them suddenly to their primitive value, without paffing beyond the value of the security, and stripping the nation of its last resource. It is folely from your firmness and fidelity in the adoption and execution of these measures, that France can be saved and revivified, and that she can arife free, glorious, and happy, after all the storms of the revolution. We invite you, therefore, citizens legislators, to give this metfage an immediate confideration. (Signed) LETOURNEUa, Prefi. LEGARDE, Sec. Proclamation Proclamation of the Executive Direc. tory of the French Republic. FRENCHMEN, YOUR legiflators have just created a new species of money, founded at once upon justice and the neceffity of providing for the immense wants of the state; they have conciliated the interest of the republic with the interest of individuals, or rather it is in this private interest even that they have found new and abundant resources for the government; and such will be always the calculations of a true and only policy. In short, after so terrible a war, after so many violent shocks, the nation is, all at once, lifted by the creation of territorial mandates to the same ftate of fortune and of means which the poffeffed in the first period of the revolution. Torender these means fruitful to recover the fame degree of opulence and splendour, we muft only have the fame latitude of confidence in the reprefentatives of the nation--the fame obedience to the laws the fame fraternal union between citizens. Your fate, O Frenchmen! is then entirely in your hands; let the law relative to territorial mandats be faithfully observed, and France will come out from the revolution happy and triumphant; if the law be despised, a profound abyss will be immediately dug under all our feet. The territorial mandats have a precious advantage which the affignats had not-it was the want of it that occafioned their depreciation.- This advantage is the faculty attached to the mandat of being realized in a moment, without hindrance, obstacle, or fale, : by the immediate and inconteftable transfer of the national domain, upon which the bearer of mandats may have fixed his choice in the whole extent of the republic. It is a territorial bank, with funds well ascertained, whose notes may be exchanged in open market, and whose guarantee is fortified by the authority of the law which gives them the forced currency of money. It was neceffary thus to prevent the criminal efforts of stock-jobbing and difaffection, which inceffantly endeavouring to convert the most wholesome remédies into poison, would not have failed to have depreciated and monopolized the new money before the mafs of the citizens could have been informed of its real value. When, by his fordid avarice, the stock-jobber depreciates by one fol a note of 100 franks, it is not folely the one fol of which he has robbed the public credit, it is a loss to the national treasury of fo many fols as there are too franks in the treasury; it is an immense sum which he has annihilated in the public banks, and in the hands of all the bearers of bills. He has ruined his fellow-citizens, he has afsassinated his country; and it is not, therefore, by the smallness of his robbery in itself that we must measure his crime, it is by the enormity of misery which it produces. Never was it more evidently true, that the safety of a whole nation may refide, and, in fact, does refide, in the inviolable probity of all the members that compose it. Yes, morals and obedience to the laws, each day ought, Frenchmen, to convince you, are the fole safeguard of free countries. The flightest attack made upon them fmakes hakes the ftate to its foundation. All our evils arife from our diffenfions, from the spirit of rapacity, the neglect of labour, from refutal to pay the contributions, from the depreciation of the national mo ney. These evils cannot be cured but by a contrary regime, by the reciprocal efteem of citizens, by their eagerness to acquit themselves to the public treasury, by the restcration of industry, by the rigorous fupport of the integral value, and without the least alteration, of the money established by the legifla-, ture. The executive directory will know how to display, on this important occafion, the whole extent of the power deposited in their hands; they will make the national will, expressed by the representatives of the people, be refpected. to make you tear out your entrails with your own hands? It is against these external enemies that we must wake the vengeance of the state. Cover with indignation and contempt their eternal advocates; those cowardly writers who connect themselves with traitors; who have nothing to present but frightful portraits; who avail themselves of an object only to make the citizens miferable, and divide to defame them. It is time that each of us should be proud of being Frenchmen! What are the crimes of some miferable men to the national glory, men whom nature has cast upon the territory of freemen? view the revolution witla the same eyes that pofterity will view it; with the fame eyes which the foreigners whom you combat view it. Refume that proud energy that produced victory; recollect your triumphs, and let them be the pledge of new triumphs. Frenchmen, be affured of this great truth; it is, that the safety of all and each of you is in the rigid execution of the law relative to mandats. Already have the happy effects of their creation been felt by the bearers of aflignats, which increase in value rapidly, although it has been pretended that it would complete their depreciation. It is to you, good citizens, friends of wisdom and liberty; immenfe majority of Frenchmen! it is to you that it belongs to second the efforts of the government; form a facred league to defend the conftitutional edifice, which refts now upon the fuccess of the mandats; repel those who flatter you to draw you into a frightful abyss. You can only fave yourselves by austere truths. What have these operated for your good, who have laboured hitherto to render you immortal; who have only irritated alternately and cherished your passions; who have sharpened hatred among you, and formed parties? What else have they done but favoured your external enemies, who long ago in arts and commerce will fucceed, would have demanded peace of you, if they had not been enabled to fet you against each other, and Let no infringement, be made upon this law, and foon a beneficent dew will vivify the happy foil that nature has adjudged to us. France will rife from that deplorable langour, a devouring stock-jobbing will ceate her ravages, activity the roads and canals will no longer be in ruins, the public functionaries of the state will be indemni fied for their painful labours, the long fufferings of the creditors and penfioners of the state will be at an end, the melancholy lot of our intrepid brethren in arms will be ameliorated, and the national felicity, which a diabolical spirit had thought to be able to feparate from public probity and the social virtues, will revive and assume new life in those immortal and fruitful fources of all profperity. (Signed) LETOURNEUR, President. The Executive Directory to the Citizens of Paris. ROY ALISM, at length despairing of being able to feduce you in its own colours, now takes to bring you under its odious yoke, a way, perhaps, more winding, but far more perfidious and lefs dangerous. For several days incendiary papers and placards have been profusely diftributed. Seditious propositions and menacing discourses are heard, and groups are formed in the public squares. The heads of the party no longer conceal their object; they audacioufly declare it. They with to overturn the republican conftitution, to deftroy the national representation and the government; to put in force the atrocious and impracticable code of 1793; and to effect the pretended equal divifion of all property, even in the most inconfiderable nature, fuch as little shops, &c. They are defirous of plunder. They are, in a word, defirous to re-elect scaffolds, and to bathe as formerly in your blood, gorging themselves with your riches and the smallest produce of your la bours. The foreigner who pays them knows very well that the present government being once destroyed, the multitude wearied at length with various agitations, which must tend to augment their sufferings, will throw themselves into the arms of a king. The miferable agitators, whom he makes his instruments, must themselves defire this, to place their plunders under the fafeguard of an authority which would be their work, and to secure the means of committing fresh ones with impunity, by sharing in all employments. Who can indeed doubt but that they are in agreement with foreigners to royalife France, or to reduce it to a ftate of debility and confufion, the inevitable consequence of which would be its dismemberment. Do our most declared enemies hold another language and another conduct? They say openly that they will carry revenge and fire every where, rather than allow peace to be made; and at the fame time they circulate a thousand lying reports to discredit the national money, and thus deprive the government of the means of securing to our armies the faculty of haftening, by new trials, a glorious and durable peace, which is the conitant object of the views of the directory, and the aim of all its labours. To these odious manœuvres they add atrocious calumnies, to deprive the government of the force it needs; they even affert that the executive directory has done nothing towards the confolidation of the Republic. Wellintentioned men! go back to the moment of the installation of the directory, and judge whether in a few months it could have done more. La Vandée has been difarmed |