HISTORY OF EUROPE. 
re€tory to receive the last instalment 
due on the sale of the national do- 
mains, amounting to eighty millions, 
and which, being payable in specie, 
might be appropriated with’ effect to 
the extinétion of the debis that lay 
most heavy cn government, and the 
liquidation of which appeared the 
most indispensible. 
This messege was communicated 
toa secret committee of the coun- 
cil of five hundred : but contrary to 
the expectations of the dire¢tory, it 
was treated with slight, and as un- 
deserving of attention. Equally 
astonished and offended at this re- 
ception of a meSsage, from which far 
different effeéts had been hoped, 
the direétory published this trans- 
action upon the following day, as an 
appeal to the public on the conduét 
of the council. But this step was 
judged to have been too hastily 
taken. It seemed intended to bring 
the council: into disgrace, as re- 
fusing to concur with the direétory 
in a necessary measure, and it evi- 
dently tended to occasion a variance 
between these two branches of go- 
Vernment, an evil that ought ofall 
_ others to be the most studiously 
avoided in the present circumstances 
of the nation. 
The committee, thus brought for- 
ward before the public, exculpated 
itself for the rejeétion of this mes- 
sage, by asserting that it represented 
the state in a much more alarming 
Situation than consisted with reality. 
Through care and economy all dif. 
ficulties might be removed, and the 
direCtory had been no less faulty in 
exaggerating the difficulties of the 
Nation, than imprudent in making 
them known to the world. 
_ It waswith much concern thatthe 
public beheld a rupture between the 
legislature and the executive de- 
partment, which, unless it were 
[169 
speedily healed, by the discretion of 
both parties, might be productive 
of the most serious evils. The ne- 
cessity of aéting in Concert prevent- 
ed farther altercation: but the 
council of five hundred became ex- 
tremely watchful of the motions of 
the direétory, and resolved to con- 
fine it with the utmost strictness, to 
the powers assigned to it by the con- 
stitution. 
During the cruel administration 
of Roberspierre, multitudes had fied 
to foreign countries, or concealed 
themselves in various parts of 
France, in order to escape the fate 
that would otherwise have attended 
them. The revolutionary commit- 
tees of the distriéts to which they 
belonged, aétuated by the barbarous 
spirit of the times, had entered the 
names of these unhappy persons on 
the jist of emigrants, by which they 
were subjected to the punishments 
enacted by the law, against indi- 
viduals of this description. After 
the overthrow of this sanguinary 
system, several decrees had been 
passed, to rescue those who had suf- 
fered unjustly, through its tyranny, 
from the wretched ‘condition to 
which they had been reduced. 
Thcse who had expatriated them. 
selves since the last of May, 1793, 
when this dreadful system com- 
_menced, were permitted to return 
to their country, and those who had 
been falsely entered on the list 
of emigrants, were cleared from the 
penalties annexed to emigration. 
But, in the numbers that appealed 
to thelaws, enaéted to reinstate in 
their rights those who had been un- 
_ justly deprived of them, there were 
many who came striétly under the 
denomination of emigrants, but 
who found means, though partiality 
or bribery, to procure testimonials 
of their not having left France be- 
fore 
