270] 
Proclamation of the Executive Direc- 
tory of the French Republic. 
FrRENCHMEN, 
YOUR legislators have just 
created a new species of money, 
founded at once upon justice and 
the necessity of providing for the 
immense wants of the state; they 
have conciliated the interest of the 
republic with the interest of indi- 
viduals, or rather it is in this pri- 
vate interest even that they have 
found new and abundant resources 
for the government ; and such will 
be always the calculations of a true 
and only policy. In short, after so 
terrible a war, after so many vio- 
fent shocks, the nation is, all at 
orice, lifted by the creation of 
territorial mandats to the same 
state of fortune and of means which 
she possessed in the first period of the 
revolution. To render these means 
fruitful—to recover the same -de- 
gree of opulence and splendour, 
we must only have the same latitude 
of confidence’ in the representa. 
tives of the natton—the same obe- 
dience to the lawg—the sgme fra- 
ternal union between citizens. 
» Your fate, O Frenchmen! is 
thenentirely in your hands; let the 
law relative to. territoriz! man- 
dats be faithfully observed, and 
France will come out from the re- 
volution happy and triumphant ; 
if the law he despised, a profound 
abyss will be immediately dug un- 
der all our feet, 
The territorial mandats have a 
precious advantage which the as- 
signats had not—it was the want 
of it that occasioned their depre- 
ciation.—This advantage is the fa- 
culty attached to the mandat, of 
being realized in a moment, with. 
@ut hindrance, obstacle, or sale, 
call the bearers of bills. 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 1706. 
by the immediate and incontesti. 
ble transfer of the national do- 
main, upon which the bearer of 
mandats may have fixed his choice 
in the whole extent of the republic. 
It is a territorial bank, with funds 
well ascertained, whose notes may 
be exchanged in open market, 
and whose guarantee is fortified by 
the authority of the law which 
gives them the forced currency of 
money. It was necessary thus 
to prevent the criminal efforts of 
stock . jobbing and disaffection, 
which incessantly endeavouring to 
convert the most wholesome reme. 
dies into poison, would not have 
failed to have depreciated and mo. 
nopolized the new money before 
the mass of the citizens could have 
been informed of its real value. 
When, by his sordid avarice, 
the stock-jobber depreciates by one 
sol a note of 100 franks, it is not 
solely the one sol of which he has 
robbed the public credit, it is a 
Joss to the national treasury of so 
many sols as there are too franks in 
the treasury ; it is an immense sum 
which he has annihilated in the 
public banks, and in the hands of 
He has 
ruined his fellow-citizens, he has 
assassinated his country, and it is 
not therefore, by the smallness of 
his robbery in itself that we must 
measure his crime, it is by the enor- 
mity of misery which it produces. 
Never was it more evidently true, 
that the safety of a whole nation 
may reside, and, in fatt, does re- 
side, in the inviolable probity of 
all the members that compose it, 
Yes, morals and obedience to 
the laws, each day ought, French. 
men, to convince you, are the sole 
safeguard of free countries. The 
slightest attack made upon them 
shakes 
