resumed their activity; public credit, by degrees, recovered; confidence and security began to spring up in every heart; and this is the moment which has been chosen to rekindle your animosities, to propagate superstition, to re-orga'nize the power of fanaticism, to sow doubts and alarms in every breast, by opening new avenues for the return of the emigrants, to shake the guarantee of public contracts, to give the signal of civil war, and to retard, by the hopes with which foreign nations were inspired, the so much wished conclusion of peace with our external foes, honourable and solid, worthy of the triumph of the French people, and of their generosity. No, you will not lose the fruits of your long sacrifices; you will rise indignantly against those base emigrants, the authors of all our calamities, of all our agitations, of all our sufferings. You will arm yourselves to stop their designs, and to defend against their attacks your persons, your property, and your rights. But beware of agitations. Do not disgrace the most glorious of causes by the excesses of an anarchy justly abhorred. Respect property. Let not an illdirected patriotic impulse throw you into a fatal confusion. Obey no voice but that of the avowed chiefs appointed by the government. Rely upon the vigilance of your magistrates, and upon the exertions of your legislators, who have remained faithful to the cause of the people. Patriotism will resume all its energy, the constitution all its force, the nation all its glory, and every citizen will enjoy in their fullest extent, liberty, happiness, and tranquillity." On the assembling of the council of five hundred, a message was dispatched to the directory, requir ing them to inform the council of the reasons for shutting up the hall where the council usually assem bled; a committee of five was ap pointed to consider of the measures necessary for the public security: and the council declared its sitting permanent. In the council of an cients a similar proceeding was adopted. The following is the message of the directory to the council of an cients, and is dated on the day in which the event took place. Citizens Representatives, The executive directory hastens to communicate to you the measures it has been forced to take, for the safety of the country, and the maintenance of the constitution. With this view, it transmits to you all the papers it has collected, as well as those it published before you were assembled. If it had withheld itself from action one day more, the republic would have been delivered up to its enemies. The halls themselves in which you meet were the points of union of the conspirators; it was from thence that they yesterday emitted their cards and certificates for the delivery of arms; it was from thence that they corresponded with their accomplices last night; and, finally, it is there, or in the environs, that they still endeavour to make seditious and clandestine assemblages, which the police is now employed in dispersing. It would have been to commit the public security, and that of the faithful representatives, to have allowed them to be confounded with the other enemies of the country. You see, citizens representatives, that the conduct of the directory was marked out by the instant necessity of being be forehand with these conspirators, who who were destroying the govern ment, who wished to deprive the French of the fruit of their triumphs, and to make this magnanimous nation bow at the feet of the kings it has subdued. In affairs of state, extreme measures can be estimated by circumstances alone: you will form a judgement of those which have determined the executive directory, and which have produced the happiest consequences. The 18th Fructidor (September 4) will be a celebrated day in the annals of France; it is the more memora ble, because it enables you to fix for ever the destinies of the repub lic. Lay hold of this occasion, citizens representatives; convert it into a great epoch; re-animate patriotism; revive public spirit; and hasten to close up the abyss in which the friends of kings had flattered themselves they would bury even the remembrance of our liberty. P. S. The executive directory will transmit to you without delay other papers, from which it results that Imbert Colomes, one of the new third of the council of five hundred, was the principal agent of the soi-disant Louis XVIII. at Lyons. The message to the council of five hundred was evidently intended as a preface to certain motions which were to be made in the council, and to certain measures to be adopted against the conspira. tors. lic is, and what you have done for its consolidation? The eye of the country, citizens representatives, looks towards you. The moment is decisive; if you allow it to pass by, if you hesitate on the measures which are to be taken, if you put off your decision for a moment, all will be lost, both you and the republic. The conspirators have been upon the watch. Your silence has given them courage and audacity; they are intriguing afresh, and are misleading public opinion by infamous libels. The journalists of Blakenbourg and London continue to disseminate their poison. The conspirators do not at tempt to conceal the fact, that their plot extends to the legislative body itself. They already speak of pu nishing the republicans for the commencement of the triumph they think they have obtained. Is it possible to hesitate still as to the measure of purging the soil of the very few known and avowed chiefs of these royalist conspirators, who wait for the convenient opportunity to destroy the republic, and to devour yourselves? You are at the brink of the volcano; it is about to swallow you up; you may close it; and can you hesitate? To-morrow it will be too late. The least hesitation is the death of the republic. You will be told of principles, formalities will be resorted to, excuses will be invented delays will be called for, time will be gained, and the constitution will be assassinated, under pretext of keeping within its limits. This commiseration, implored in favour of certain men, to what will it lead you! to see these very men take out of your hands the thread of their criminal conspiracies, and collect in your bosom the horrible firebrands of civil war, to set fire to the country. L. M. Revelliere- Lagarde, Secretary. On the sitting of the 5th of September,the message of the directory was no sooner read in the council of five hundred, than Boullay de la Meurthe (as the reporter of the committee of public safety appointed on the preceding day) ascended the tribune. He began by contrast ing the situation in which the re public stood, previous to the elec tion of the new third, with that in which it was placed by the machinations of the royalist conspirators. He next entered into an examina tion of the measures pursued by the opposition party in the council; all of which he endeavoured to prove could have no other ob ject than the restoration of royalty. Without a doubt, he continu ed, an ordinary tribunal would declare the conspiracy real, and pu nish the authors. But let us declare to France, that not a drop of blood shall be shed--that the scaffolds of terror shall not be erected anew. (Bravo, Bravo, re-echoed from all quarters.) BoULLAY concluded by presenting the following plan of a resolution:: The council of five hundred, considering that the enemies of the republic have constantly followed up the plan traced out to them in the instructions found upon Brotier, Bertherot, Laville-Heurnoin and Duverne de Perle, seconded by a crowd of royalist emissaries scattered through every part of France-Considering that it was specially recommended to these agents to direct the operations and choices of the last assemblies, primary, communal, and electoral, and to fix all the elections on the partisans of roy alty That, with the exception of a small number of departments, where the energy of the republicans destroyed their ef forts, the elections had introduced into the public functions, and even into the legislative bo dy, notorious emigrants, chiefs of rebels, and royalists-Considering that the constitution being attacked by a part of those whom it had particularly ap: pointed pointed for its defence, and against whom it had taken no precaution, it would be impossible to maintain it without recurring to extraordinary measures-Considering, in a word, that in order to extinguish the existing conspiracy, to prevent a civil war, and the general effusion of blood, which would have been the inevitable consequence of it, nothing can be more urgent than to repair the wounds inflicted on the constitution since the 1st Prairial last, and to take the necessary measures to prevent the liberty, the repose, and hap. piness of the people from being in future exposed to danger The council, after declaring urgency, adopts the following resolutions: 1. The operations of the primary, communal, and electoral as semblies in the departments of Ain, l'Ardoche, l'Arriege, l'Aube, l'Aveynon, Bouches du Rhone, Calvados, Charante, Cher, Côte d'Or, Côtes du Nord, Dordogne, l'Eure, l'Eure and Loire, Gironde, Heraulte, Illie and Villane, Indre and Loire, Loire, Haute Loire, Loire Interieure, Loiret, Manche, Marne, Mayenne, Mont-Blanc, Morbihan, Mozelle, les Deux-Nethes, Nord, Oise, Orne, Pas de Calais, Puy-deDome, Lower Rhine, Upper Rhine, Rhone, Haute Saone, Saone and Loire, Sarthe, Seine, Lower Seine, Seine and Marne, Seine and Oise, Somme, Tarn, Var, Vaucluse, Yonne, are declared null and illegal. II. Those of the electoral assembly of the department of Gers are declared legal and valid. In consequence, citizen Dufuan is admitted into the council of elders; and citizens Carriere, Lacarriere, and Sauran, into the council of five hundred. The administrators, judges, grand jury, &c. appointed by this assembly, shall enter upon the exercise of their respective functions. III. The elections for the department of Lot are in the same manner judged valid, contrary to a former decision, and the citizens chosen; Lachiere, for the elders, and Poncet and Debrel, for the five hundred, shall take their seats. IV. The individuals appointed to public functions by the primary, communal, or electoral assemblies, without exception of those appointed to the legislative body, by the departments above mentioned, shall, on the publication of this law, cease to exercise all their functions, under the penalties contained in the 6th article of the 5th title of the penal code. V. The executive directory is required to fill up the vacancies in the tribunals in virtue of the preceding articles, as well as those which shall become vacant by resignation or otherwise, before the election in the month of Germinal, 6th year. VI. The nominations made by the directory, in virtue of the preceding article, shall, in every respect, have the same effect, and the same duration, as if they had been made by the primary and electoral assemblies. VII. The law of the 1st Prairial last, which, in contravention of the 78th article of the constitutional act, admits into the legislative body the citizens Job Ayme, Mersan, Terrand Vaillant, Garr, and Polissart, is repealed. VIII. The first article of the law of 8th Messidor last, bearing in contempt of the same article of the constitutional act, the recal of the 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th articles of the law of 3d Brumaire, 4th year, relative to the relations of emigrants, is likewise repealed. IX. The 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th articles of the said law of the 3d Brumaire, 4th year, are reestablished, and shall remain in vigour till four years subsequent to the proclamation of a general peace. X. No person, the relation or connexion of an emigrant, within the degrees prescribed by the second article of the said law, shall be admitted for the same space to vote in the primary assemblies, and cannot be appoin ed elector if he is not comprehended in one of the exceptions specified by the 4th article of the same law. XI. No man can be admitted to vote in the primary and electoral assemblies, tili he has previously taken, in presence of the assembly of which he is member, and deposited in the hands of the president, the individual oath of hatred to royalty and to anarchy, of fidelity and attachment to the republic and constitution of the 3d year. XII. The 2d article of the law of the 9th Messidor last is repealed, in so far as it concerns the chiefs of the rebels of La Vendée, and the Chouans, to whom of consequence no provision of the article of the present law remains common. Those are deemed chiefs of the rebels of La Vendée, and of the Chouans, who are pointed out as such by the law of the 5th July, 1792. XIII. The individuals after named, viz. Aubry, Job Ayme, Bayard, Blain, of the mouths of the Rhone: Boissy d'Anglas, Borne, Bourdon of Oise, Cadroi, Concherry, Delahaye of the Lower Seine, Delarue, Doumere, Dumolard, Deplantier, Duprat, Gilbert Desmo lieres, Henry Lariviere, Imber Colomes, Camille Jordan, Jourdan of the mouths of the Rhone, Gau Lacarriere, Le Marchand Gommecourt Lemerer, Merzan, Madier, Millard, Noailles, Andre of La Lozere, Mac Curtain, Pavie, Pastoret, Pichegru, Polissart, Praire, Montaud, Quatremere of Quincy, Sala din, Simeon, Vauvilliers, Vienot, Vaublanc, Villaret Joyeuse, Willot, all members of the council of five hundred; Barbe Varbois, Doans, Dumas, Ferrant Vaillant, Laffont, Ladebut, Lamau, Muraire, Murinais, Paralis, Portalis, Rovere, Tronçon Ducoudray, all members of the council of elders; Carnot, Barthelemi, directors; Brotier, exabbé; Laville-heurnois, ex-magistrate: Duveme-de-Preste, called Dunan; Cochon, ex-minister of police; Dossonville, ex-clerk in the police; Miranda, Morgan, ex-generals; Suard, journals; Mailhe, ex-conventional; Ramel, command. ant of the guard of the legislative body, shall, without delay, be transported to the place which the directory shall determine. Their property shall be sequestrated after the publication of the present law; and they shall not be allowed to inter fere with it till after an authentic return of their arrival at the place of their transportation. XIV. The executive directory is authorized to procure for them provisionally out of their effects the means of supplying their most ur gent wants. XV. All the individuals inscribed upon the list of emigrants, and not definitively erazed, shall be obliged to quit the territory of the republic, that is to say, from Paris, and every other commune, of which the po pulation is twenty thousand inhabitants, and upwards, in 24 hours after |