The New Hampshire Gazette

French Official State Paper.

PROCLAMATION

Of the Executive Directory, to the French, in Answer to the British Manifesto.

Citizens,

THE interest of the Republic commands you one more important triumph, After innumerable combats from which you have returned conquerors, it remains for you to reduce the first, the most intractable, the most crafty of all your enemies.

The Executive Directory desires a general Peace, the Directory wishes this peace for you and for Europe. But this year past and more, a faithless enemy agitates himself, Stuns all the Cabinets of Europe with a vain buzzing, proposes with a loud voice Peace, breathes secretly War, affects to desire to extinguish with one hand the Torch which he lights again with the other; ends with eclat Pacificators, and repels in effect all those overtures which alone could tend to a pacification. This enemy, you know that your indignation points him out to you and names him: it is the Cabinet of St. James's: it is the most corrupting and the most corrupted of the Governments of Europe; it is the English Government.

It is not only against French Liberty that this Government directs its conspiracy; its plot embraces the whole World. Ah! too long since, that perfidious Cabinet troubles, enslaves, desolates every part of the World.—Speak, Americans; say who are, directly or indirectly, your true Dominators; unhappy Indians, say by what detestable art that Government has established its tyranny among you; and you Europeans, more unfortunate still, innocent Inhabitants of the plains of Franconia, and of the lofty Alps, innumerable Victims of the scourge of combats, say who has been the most ardent instigator of this destructive War, in which have been sacrificed more than a million of men, in which immense treasures have been swallowed up, in which the Eye of Peace itself now only perceives on the field of victory but general misery, universal mourning, one vast scene of despair!

Well! it is in the glare of these circumstances that the Cabinet of St. James's reveals to afflicted Europe that Britain alone has left nothing of the horrible disasters. Attend to this speech from the height of a Throne!—“Our revenues,” said the King, “have continued to augment, our national “industry has taken a new spring, our com- “merce has passed its ancient limits.” If the King of England has told the truth, Powers of Europe, what a terrible lesson for you! What, is then this Government interested in your dissensions, which alone reaps the fruit of them, which lives by your calamities, prospers by your distress, accumulates in its treasuries the tears and the blood of Nations, and grows fat on their spoils?

It is clear that this Cabinet must desire War, since War enriches it. That Government, nevertheless, in its late Manifesto, and in its speeches of parade, dares accuse France of an insatiable avarice! It does not say that the English, first Devastators of our Island of St. Domingo, have also taken without a blow the Dutch Colonies, although the United Provinces were then their Allies, and that they pretend to retain their thefts, which they will call conquests; and the King of England speaks to the Powers of Europe of the ambition of France!

But the principles of the French towards other nations, are now manifested; vague allegations can no longer obscure them. If the French republic secures the limits which she has received from nature—if she repairs in this point the faults of Monarchy, she disdains conquests foreign to that great aim: she does not oppress the secondary States and the weak powers; she thinks not of stripping her Allies; she is faithful to her friends; she punishes her enemies yet without hating them; naturally generous, she does not even hate the English nation; and never in France will a Minister have a right to the apotheosis for his abhorrence of that people. But every body in France is agreed in one point; it is that one is there put in mind of Toulon, of Dunkirk, of Quiberon, of the Vendee: it is that one detests and curses cruelty, perfidiousness, the bloody machiavelism of the British ministry, and that one deplores at the same time, the inconceivable blindness by which the English suffer themselves to be over-burdened, for to become the horror of the world.

The great nation will revenge the Universe, and to effectuate this, Frenchmen, more than one means presents itself to you; the most worthy and the most rapid is the invasion of England. Unheard-of successes have accustomed you to count no more the obstacles. In such enterprises, the name alone of the Armies is the promise of triumph; and the justice of the cause is its warranty. It is no longer the time of laughing at projects of descent, and of discussing the means. At the height where the French are, their will is victory. Therefore, let the army of England go and dictate peace in London! and there also, Republicans, you will find auxiliaries; and there also, you will find many men, whom reason has not sufficiently abandoned, to prevent them from being sensible of the odium which their government spreads over the English name; and there also, you will find those thousands of generous men who struggle this long while, in order to obtain a parliamentary reform; and there also, you will find, the Labourers without number, who sigh after peace, whom war, by protracting itself, reduces to misery, and who weigh, in the balance of their real wants, the splendid deceit of royal harangues, the illusion of Manifestos, and the chimera of conquests; and there also, you will find, the Irish nation, so many years oppressed, and which bears with so much uneasiness the chains of a Court that nourishes itself with the toils of Irishmen, drenches itself in their blood, and feasts at their despair.

Go, under these auspices, brave Republicans: second the national and unanimous desire: conducted by the Hero who placed you so often on the road to Victory, you will have also for you the acclamations of all the just and virtuous souls that exist in the world; go, re-establish the liberty of the seas; restrict in fine, within just limits, the disorderly ambition of that government, perturbator of its own country, as well as of the Universe;—secure the repose of the French Republic, and that of Europe; there is the grand task which remains for you to accomplish. And since at this moment the British government, sneering coldly and with a ferocious smile at the disasters of the Continent, applauds its opulence, force it to pay, conformable to justice, its quota of the expenses of this War, which that Cabinet alone wishes to eternize, and which it well knows it may terminate as soon as it chooses to speak, to the French Republic, a language that one may listen to, and that one can believe sincere.

Citizens, you will recognize your own sentiments in the exposition of those of the Executive Directory. The same spirit animates your faithful Representatives. In vain the Cabinet of London exhausts its efforts to sow among them mistrust and discord, or to persuade that it has succeeded in it. The 13th Fructidor has destroyed English influence, and since that memorable Day, the Members of the Council and those of the Directory present the spectacle of the most affecting union.

Hah! All Patriots have but one interest—There is in the Republic but one opinion and one desire. War to the Cabinet of St. James's is the cry of France. What glory is promised to the Army of England! It suffices to indicate it to such Heroes.—Ah! to inflame our Warriors with an invincible enthusiasm, it is only to put them in mind of what they have already done. The Walls of the strongest places have fallen before them; the first Captains of the powers of Europe have not been able to resist them. They have made prisoners, Bender, at Luxembourg, and Wurmser, at Mantua. By them the three colored Standard waves on the borders of the Rhine, and on the Aegean Sea. After so many Victories what speeches or what words could add any thing to the ardor of French Soldiers? It is enough for them to hear the voice of their country, and to bear in mind their own exploits.

(Signed) REVILLIERE LEPAUX, President.

LEGARDE, Sec. General.