Jenks's Portland Gazette

ACT OF ACCUSATION

Against the Ex Directors, proposed by a special commission of the Council of Five Hundred.

For having made to be sold, or for having themselves sold, our ammunition, our arms, our provisions, our effects of every species, and for having left our fortified places without warlike stores.

For having remained in the most cruel inaction, whilst every thing announced war, whilst our enemies made the most formidable preparations, and whilst the North was vomiting forth soldiers in immense numbers.

For having sent our brave legions without arms, without ammunition, without provisions, to be destroyed upon the banks of the Danube and of the Adige, by an enemy three times more numerous than they.

For having preserved in the interior, an army of more than a hundred thousand men, at the very moment at which war was declared.

For having sent away by their own authority above forty thousand men to perish in the deserts of Arabia.

For having discouraged and exasperated the army of Italy, by dismissing General Championnet, who had dethroned a King, and by the nomination of Scherer to the command of that army.

For never having punished the agents and commissaries of the Directory accused of haranguing and plundering the allied republicans.

For having destroyed by a military force the constitution of the Cisalpine, and for having mutilated its authorities.

For having interrupted the correspondence between the diplomatic agents and the minister, and for having appropriated to themselves this correspondence.

For having made an attack on the national sovereignty, by violating the liberty of elections.

For having sent Commissaries to influence the Electors on the side of the Directory, and by threatening the arrestation of those who would not conform to the will of what they called the Government.

For sending confidential letters to the Central Commissaries, in which were developed the means of corrupting opinion.

For suffering to remain unpunished the Central Commissary of La Sarthe, which is attested even by the Messages of the Directory.

For the means of Terror which these Central and Special Commissaries employed to remove the Patriots from the Political Assemblies.

For the arbitrary and innumerable detentions of Republican Functionaries before the Elections, under the pretence of Anarchy, in order to deprive them of the suffrages of the people, a conduct which benumbed all public spirit.

For having rendered themselves culpable by arrestations and arbitrary imprisonments.

For having suffered the War in La Vendee, and of the Chouans, to be reorganized, which ought to have been prevented by wise precautions, or combated by forces sent from the interior.

For having encouraged by the re-action, and multiplied by impunity, murders and assassinations, directed principally against the Republicans and the Functionaries; in fine, for having hazarded the Republic by the vices of their administration.