r STATE, PAPERS. 
these who harbour emigrants, that 
if any such person. shall be found 
under their protection, after the 
time fixed for their departure, 
every person giving that protection, 
will be regarded as connivers in 
the disobedience to this edi&, and 
will be prosecuted with the utmost 
rigour of the law, as enemies to the 
public welfare. 
Finally, the council declares, 
that if such emigrants, before their 
departure, dare to commit any act 
of violence on the territory of 
France, they shall be apprehended 
and given up to the French, 
Given in council held under our 
presidence in the castle of 
Neufchatel, the 27th of Ja- 
nuary, 1795. 
(Signed) Marvat. 
Declaration of the Prince of Orange. 
THE prince of Orange has hi- 
therto thought it unnecessary to pub- 
lish the motives which induced 
him to absent himself for some 
time from his country, being con- 
vinced that no person could, with 
any shadow of justice, accuse him 
of the smallest crime in having 
quitted the territories cf the pro-’ 
vinces of Holland, after the states 
of that province had thought proper 
to send deputies to the commanders 
of the enemy’s forces to capitulate, 
or rather to submit to them; but 
the resolution taken by the pre- 
tended States General the 24th of 
February last, on the motion made 
in that assembly the 31st of January 
by the deputies of the pretended 
provisional representatives of the 
people of Holland, having come 
to his knowledge, in which they 
thought proper to abolish the office 
‘Ole 
of stadtholder, captain general and 
hereditary admiral, with which this 
prince was invested, alleging, as 
a motive for this resolution, that 
he himself had abdicated them, he 
feels it incumbent on himself to be 
no longer silent, and to repel this 
calumny by a simple and exact 
statement of the fa¢ts which pre- 
ceded and rendered necessary his 
departure from the territories of the 
United States. 
The inundations formed for the 
defence of the republic, and in 
particular for that of the province 
of Holland (as well as the rivers in 
that country), being frozen in De- 
cember last, there no longer re- 
mained any means of defending 
the provinces of Utrecht and Hol. 
land, after the retreat of the army 
commanded by general count Wal. 
moden from the borders of the 
Waal and of the Rhine; the troops 
of the state, which might. have 
been ‘employed in the defence of 
these two provinces, being reduced 
(as well by hardships which the 
army sustained during the last cam- 
paign, as by sickness) to too small 
a number to garrison sufficiently 
those posts which it was nécessary 
should be occupied in order to pre- 
vent the enemy from penetrating. 
It must here be observed, that a 
great part of the troops which were 
in these two provinces could not 
be employed aguinst the enemy, 
in virtue of the capitulations which 
many places had made, and in 
which it was stipulated thaz. sheir 
garrisons should be sent into the 
interior of the republic, after hav- 
ing sworn not to serve against the 
armies of France during the war 
until they were exchanged. 
The states of Utrecht therefore, 
thought it right to capitulate on 
Friday 
