Gazette Of The United States

In the Name of the Nation.
National Civil-Commission.
We, Leger-Felicite Sonthonax,
National Civil Commissioner, delegated to the French Leeward Islands, there to re-establish public order and tranquility.

Considering that the colony of St. Domingo, exhausted by a calamitous war, is in absolute necessity of the fund, which the National Assembly has confided to the disposition of the Marine Department, upon the American government, by the decree of the 26th of June last.

That this decree is well understood in the Islands and on the Continent: That if, to put it in execution, and to confer its beneficent effects on the colony of St. Domingo, it be necessary to wait for an official notification from the Agents of France to the American Government, the colony, in the interval, may be precipitated into the gulph that is daily preparing for it by the negligence, or perhaps, by the perfidy of the Ministers.

That it is the duty of the National Civil Commissioners, invested, by the law of the 22d of June, and by that of the 17th August last, with the Colonial Dictatorship, to remedy in virtue of their powers, the evils caused by the culpable silence of the former agents of the executive power of France, and, above all, to use their utmost endeavors to prevent the people committed to their jurisdiction, from suffering the dreadful scourge with which they are threatened from the want of provisions and money.

Require Mr. Ternan, Minister of France to the United States of America, in the name of the French Nation, in the name of the Colony of St. Domingo, ready to sink under its own ruins, to press with efficacy his negotiations with the Government of the United States, to obtain from the said Government, in virtue of the decree of the 26th June last, sent to him by us in the month of October, the completion of the four millions of French livres, and to apply that sum to the discharge of the necessary expenses incurred in furnishing provisions to the Colony of St. Domingo and particularly to the payment of the draughts already drawn by the administration of the Colony for that purpose.

Making the said Mr. Ternan responsible for all the evils that may result from his not executing this our requisition; protesting even, in that case, to accuse him to the National Convention and to the Minister for foreign affairs.

Given at the Cape, this 9th day of December, 1792.

By the National Civil Commission.
Signed,
SONTHONAX.
O.F. Delpech, Secretary to the Commission.