STATE PAP E/R’S. 
Message of the Executive Dire@ory 
to the Ciuncil of Five Hundred, 
in Fan. 1796. 
Citizens Legislators, 
THE executive directory can no 
longer defer to call the most serious 
attention of the legislative body to 
the emigrants in the colonies. 
The national’ convention thought 
proper to adjourn this discussion of 
the greatest urgency and import- 
ance; on the 25th Messidor, third 
year, when the committee of public 
safety proposed, in a report con- 
cerning the state of St. Domingo, 
to enforce the execution of the 
laws respecting emigrants in the 
colonies, as well as in the mother 
country. The moment is arrived 
when the legislators of the republic, 
sensible of the mischief of too much 
indulgence, ought to crush with 
their anathema the most irrecon- 
cileable enemies of liberty and 
equality. It is necessary that the 
emigrants, in whatever place the 
reside, or whatever disguise they, 
assume, should no longer be able 
to, elude the sentence of the law 
pronounced against them, 
Any ‘distinction between the 
emigrants of France and those of 
the colonies would be extremeiy 
unjust and impolitic. It would 
occasion the loss of our colonies, 
whom liberty alone can attach to 
us, and along with the loss of our 
colonies, would destroy every hope 
of re-establishing our commerce, 
and of procuring to the republic an 
inexhaustible source of real opu. 
lence and prosperity. 
The national convention was for 
a long time led into an error in 
consequence of the prevalence of a 
faftious and unfounded opinion, 
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They retained an idea, that it was 
possible to dispense with nature and 
justice with respect to the freedom 
of the blacks, and to save our 
colonies; by committing a criminal 
outrage against the rights of man. 
Some legislators, deceived by the 
artifices ot the colonial aristocracy, 
were ignorant of the real causes of 
those calamities which desolated 
our colonies; but the report ot the 
commission appointed to investi- 
gate the truth, whichso much in-~ 
trigue had been employed to con~ 
ceai, could not fail to open their 
eyes, 
Will the protectors, the de- 
fenders of the emigrant colonists, 
who have successively been dema- 
gogues, royalists, and moderés, 
according to the different periods 
of the revolution, still be able to in- 
terest your compassion, by repre 
senting to you the loss of their 
fortune, and destitute situation in 
which they are placed. 
But have not the clergy and no. 
bility of France, and all the emi- 
grants in Europe, cause to regret: 
the loss of the privileges on which 
they founded the slavery of the 
people? And have they not been 
the authors of their own wretched. 
ness and disgrace? 
They also appeal to the com. 
passion of the French people—they 
also style themselves the viGtims of 
a revolution, which has compelled 
them to abandon their homes,’ 
and yet the constitution for ever 
interdiéts all of them. from return. 
ing to the country. 
Will these emigrant colonists say 
that they only retired to the United 
States to avoid the horrors of war, 
and that they have remained in a 
neutral country ? 
But 
