Message from the Directory, addressed to the Council of Ancients, doted the 5th Pluvise (Jan. 25) and read, in a Secret Committee.

CITIZENS LEGISLATORS, The enemies of France have spoken of peace, but it was to relax bar preparations, while they themselves redoubled their efforts for continuing the war; they wish to weaken the courage of our defenders, by lulling them with the hopes of approaching peace, which they themselves do not cease to elude by the most evasive forms, and the most frivolous pretexts. This per. fidy on their part is not new, and the reports they have affected to circulate on this subject, since the commencement of hostilities, have always been seized and believed by the foreign faction which they maintain among us. But these manœuvres have never been countenanced by the executive directory, who in offering peace to the coalesced powers on conditions as moderate as are consistent with the national dignity, have neglected nothing for assuring new triumphs to the republican arms.

The French should know that they never can have peace with their enemies till they shall have rendered it impossible for them to pursue their disastrous projects. This epoch is not far off; it must crown a vigorous campaign, and we have reason to think that that which is about to be opened will yield in nothing to that of the third year. The government already acquires strength every day, and the hopes of the enemies of the interior, of a disagreement between the legislative body and the directory, disappear every day; the circulation of provisions begins to be re-esta

b'ished; the young citizens are de strous of rejoining their colours; the general activity contributes to second the salutary and decisive measure of the forced loan; the certainty, in short, of seeing all the factious punished, whether their royalism be open or concealed, or whether they dissemble it under the last forms of anarchy: every thing, in short, announces, that if we are forced by our implacable ene. mies to cover still their bloody plains with our soldiers, it will be to gain soon new laurels, to enjoy from henceforward the unalterable repose that is assured by the consti tution, sworn to by all Frenchmen, and the return of morality and jus tice, the love of labour and œco. nomy. Citizens legislators, you are aware of what renders the service so painful in the present moment, notwithstanding the prodigious resources which are still to be found in the Republic, is the absence of representative signs of exchange, swallowed up by that avarice which renders it impossible to provide the nessary supplies for the armies. We must devise some substitute, and the directory can perceive no other except that of raising articles in kind, at least those which are at present most necessary and indispensable, such as horses for car. riages and for the use of cavalry.

The principal cause of the little success of the last campaign was the deficiency of the means of conveyance, and the superiority of our enemies' cavalry. The evil in. creased every day, and we are obliged to tell you, citizens legisla tors, that if there is not taken, in this respect, a measure prompt and efficacious, we must expect defeats. The directory requests that you

will authorize it to raise the thir. tieth horse in every part of the republic. Experience assures the success of this measure; all others will only have doubtful conse. quences, slow, 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 proposition of an extraordinary levy of horses till after the subject had been long considered, and it shall be sensible that there exist no other means of assuring the service. This levy shall be made by the administrative bodies. The legislative body may itself state the mode of the execution, or leave it to the directory, who will follow the most economical and the least vexatious to the citizens; whatever decision you may make in this respect, circumstances require that this measure may not be deferred.

Citizens legislators, the directory invites the council to take the object of its demand into the most serious and the most prompt consideration.

REWBELL, President.

Message of the Executive Directory of France to the Council of Five Hundred, respecting the Emission of Mandats Territoriaux.

CITIZENS LEGISLATORS, YOUR resolution of the zoth of this month relative to the creation of "Territorial Mandats," payable to the bearer, is one of those grand and happy 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 hasten to make an addition which is indispensable, by giving to those mandats a com

pulsive currency. Without such a law, the new paper and the old would both fall into equal depreciation. The stock joobers, would seize upon both, they would plunder the nation of its demesnes, and the government of its re.

sources.

Certainly when paper money has but a remote, a doubtful, or insuf. ficient security, nothing short of despotism can force its currency. Such would be the case, if it were intended to recall the assignats to their nominal value, before their mass was reduced to the amount of the national property at the dispo sal 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 possessions of the republic. The citizens may be deceived as to their real interests by the cruel manœuvres of stock. jobbing. They have been deceived, and will be so still, unless their repensentatives foresee 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 same part against those who may wish to depreciate a paper which has more need of confidence, as it is not di. visible into small portions, and therefore less fitted for ordinary transactions? If you do not take this step, this paper must fall, and with its own, will infallibly cause the ruin of the assignats.

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 body 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 assignats. This is an error to which stock-jobbers will labour to give credit as wishing to monopolize this representative sign, and to possess themselves of the public fortune. But it is evi

dent, that on the contrary stock jobbing will find its death in the compulsive circulation of this paper, and that in twenty-four hours the government will triple the value of assignats.

The assignat is now at the three hundredth part of its nominal va. lue. When the mandats shall be at par with money, the assignats 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 assignats thus exchanged are to be burned, until there shall be no more than 3 milliards in circula. tion. The circulation will then be brought back to its usual course, and the paper to its natural prepor. tion to the land which it represents. The mandat being on a par with money, and the relation of the assignats with the former being prescribed by the laws, stock jobbing 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 assignat appears to be more suit

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 occasions, until the system of contribution shall be settled, and the receipts collected regularly. In proportion as the circulating mass of assignats shall be diminished by burning those which are exchanged, the relative value of one hundred for one may be gradually ameli orated until the equilibrium shall be restored, without any shock between the remaining assignats and the demesnes which form their se curity.

But it is necessary for this pur. pose, 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 rigorously punished. It was by relaxing from this essential point that assignats have fallen into their present state. of depreciation, and that it is im possible to raise them suddenly to their primitive value, without passing beyond the value of the security, and stripping the nation of its last resource.

It is solely from your firmness and fidelity in the adoption and exccution of these measures, that France can be saved and revivified, and that she can rise free, glorious, and happy, after all the storms of the revolution.

We invite you, therefore, citizens legislators, to give this message an immediate consideration. (Signed) LE TOURNEUR, Presi. LEGARDE, Sec.

Proclamation

Proclamation of the Executive Directory of the French Republic

FRENCHMEN,

YOUR legislators have just created a new species of money, founded at once upon justice and the necessity of providing for the immense wants of the state; they have conciliated the interest of the republic with the interest of indi. viduals, or rather it is in this privare 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 olicy. In short, after so terrible a war, after so many vio. lent shocks, the nation is, all at once, lifted by the creation of territorial mandats to the same state of fortune and of means which she possessed in the first period of the revolution. To render these means fruitful to recover the same de gree of opulence and splendour, we must only have the same latitude of confidence in the representa. tives of the nation-the same obe. dience to the laws-the same fraternal union between citizens.

Your fate, O Frenchmen! is then entirely in your hands; let the law relative to territorial mandars 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 assignats had not-it was the want of it that occasioned their depreciation. This advantage is the faculty attached to the mandat, of being realized in a moment, with out hindrance, obstacle, or sale,

by the immediate and incontestí. ble transfer of the national do. main, 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 necessary thus to prevent the criminal efforts of stock - jobbing and disaffection, which incessantly endeavouring to convert the most wholesome reme. dies into poison, would not have failed to have depreciated and monopolized the new money before the mass of the citizens could have been informed of its real value.

When, by his sordid avarice, the stock-jobber depreciates by one sol a note of 100 franks, it is not solely the one sol of which he has robbed the public credit, it is a loss to the national treasury of so many sols 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 assassinated 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 enor. mity of misery which it produces. Never was it more evidently true, that the safety of a whole nation may reside, and, in fact, does reside, 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 sole safeguard of free countries. The slightest attack made upon them

shakes

shakes the state to its foundation. All our evils arise from our dissentions, from the spirit of rapacity, the neglect of labour, from refas 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 esteem of citizens, by their eagerness to acquit themselves to the public treasury, by the restoration of industry, by the rigorous support of the integral value, and without the least alteration, of the money established by the legisla

ture.

The executive directory will know how to display on this important occasion, the whole extent of the power deposited in their hands; they will make the national will, expressed by the representatives of the people, be respected.

It is to you, good citizens, friends of wisdom and liberty; immense majority of Frenchmen! it is to you that it belongs to second the efforts of the government; form a sacred lengue to defend the constitutional edifice, which rests now upon the success of the mandats; repel those who flatter you to draw you into a frightful abyss. You can only save 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 would have demanded peace of you, if they had not been enabled to set you against each other, and

to make you tear out your entrails with your own hands?

It is against these external enemies that we must wake the ven geance 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 miserable, and divide to defame them. It is time that each of us should be proud of being Frenchmen! What are the crimes of some miserable men to the national glory, men whom na. ture has cast upon the territory of freemen? view the revolution with the same eyes that posterity will view it; with the same eyes which the foreigners whom you combat view it. Resume that proud energy that produced victory; recol. lect your triumphs, and let them . be the pledge of new triumphs.

Frenchmen, be assured 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 assignats, which increase in value rapidly, although it has been pretended that it would complete their depreciation.

us.

Let no infringement be made upon this law, and soon a benefi cent dew will vivify the happy soil that nature has adjudged to France will rise from that deplor able languor, a devouring stock-jobbing will cease her ravages, activity in arts and commerce will succeed, the roads and canals will no longer be in ruins, the public function. aries of the state will be indernni