shall be suffered to pass for merchandise.

7. The course of the French monies will be provisorily tolerated on the footing they are on at present, and there will be speedily made out a rate of specie coined with the arms of his majesty.

S. The religious, ecclesiastical and political foundations, and other public establishments, temporal or spiritual, suppressed since the revolution, and desirous of being reestablished, shall address themselves to the junto for a decision.

9. The sequestration of the estates of the emigrants shall be removed, as they shall gradually appear before the junto to legitimate them.

10. It shall not be permitted to any French emigrant to sojourn in the conquered places, except those only who have property there, or have been completely settled and domiciliated there before the revolution; yet they shall however be obliged, in order to be permitted to abide there, to address themselves in writing to the junto, for the purpose of obtaining its express permission.

And this present declaration shall be printed, published, and posted up wherever it shall be required.

Done at Condé, July 20, 1793. (Marked with a flourish) LEC. Vr. (Signed by order) DE HESDIN.

Letter of General Dumourier, Commander in Chief of the Northern Army, to the National Convention.

Louvain, March 12, 1793. Second Year of the Republic.

Citizen President,

HE safety of the people is the

supreme law; and to this consideration I have just sacrificed an almost certain conquest, by quitting the victorious part of the army ready to penetrate into the heart of Holland, to come to the succour of those of the troops of the republic who have just sustained a check. This check has been owing to the physical and moral causes I am about to develope to you with the frankness which is more necessary than ever, and which would invariably have wrought the safety of the republic, had it been employed in the accounts they gave in by the agents by whom she is served, and had it always been listened to with as much complaisance as has been bestowed on deceptious flattery.

You know, citizen representatives, into what a state of disor ganization and suffering the armies of Belgium have been thrown by a minister, and by the committees, that have brought France to the brink of ruin. This minister and these committees have been changed; but, very far from punishing them, Pache and Hassenfratz have succeeded to the important post of the mayoralty of Paris; and hence has the capital witnessed the renewal, in the Rues des Lombards, of scenes of blood and carnage.

In the month of December I presented to you, in four memorials, the grievances it was necessary to redress. I pointed out to you the sole means which could put an end to the evil, and restore to our

armies all their energy, as well as to the cause of the nation all the justice by which it ought to be characterised. These memorials were thrown aside, and you are perfect strangers to them. Cause them to be again presented to you, and you will find in them the prediction of all that has befallen us. You will also discover in them the remedy of the other dangers which surround us, and which threaten our growing republic,

The Belgic armies united in the territories of Aix-la-Chapelle and Liege, have not only suffered privations of every description without murmuring, but been gradually deprived at the same time by disease, by skirmishes with the enemy, and by the numerous desertions of officers and soldiers, of more than one half of their strength. It was not till the entry of general Beurnonville into the ministry that the recruiting of these armies and the supply of their wants were attended to. This was, however, so short a time ago, that we still experience, in its fullest latitude, the disorganizing scourge of which we have been the victims,

Such was our situation when, on the first of February, you thought that you owed to the national honour the declaration of war against England and Holland. From that moment, I sacrificed all my chagrins, and thought no longer of my resignation, which you will find announced in my four memorials. I now made the enormous dangers and the safety of my country my sole objects; I sought to anticipate our enemies; and the distressed army have described to you forgot all its sufferings to attack Holland.

Whilst aided by new supplies of troops from France, I took Breda, Klundert, and Gertruydenberg. Preparing to push these conquests still further, the Belgian army, under the command of generals, filled with courage and civism, undertook the bombardment of Maestricht. In this expedition every thing was needed; the new administration was not yet established, and the old one was both criminal and vicious. Money was in abundance; but the new forms established at the royal treasury prevented cash being forwarded to any department of the service. I cannot as yet enter on a detail of the causes of the check our armies have received, since I am but just arrived; the hope, however, of obtaining possession of Maestricht has not only been abandoned, but the armies have retired with loss and confusion. The magazines of every description which we had begun to collect at Liege, as well as a part of the old army and some new battalions, have fallen into the hands of the enemy. This retreat has drawn upon us new enemies; and it is expedient in this place that I should develope to you the moral causes of our evils.

In human events there exists at all times a recompense for virtues and a punishment for vices. Individuals may escape this providence, which you may term what you please, because such points are too delicate for our perceptions. Whilst our cause was just we vanquished our enemies! As soon as avarice and injustice guided our steps we destroyed ourselves, and our enemies took the advantage of

us.

You

You are flattered; you are deceived; and I will now remove the veil. We have oppressed the Belgians by every species of vexation; have violated the sacred rights of their liberty; and have imprudently insulted their religious opinions. By a robbery but little lucrative, the instruments of their sacred worship have been profaned; and their character and intentions have been misrepresented to you. The union of Hainault to the republic was effected by sabres and muskets; and that of Brussels by a handful of men who could exist in trouble only, and by a few sanguinary men assembled to intimidate the citizens. Attend to the history of the Netherlands; you will there find that the Belgians are good, frank, brave, and impatient under any yoke. The duke of Alva, the most cruel of the satellites of Philip the Second, caused eighteen thousand of them to perish by the hands of hangmen. The Belgians revenged their cause by thirty years spent in civil wars; and their attachinent to the religion of their ancestors could alone subject them once more to the yoke of Spain.

Your finances were exhausted when we entered Belgium. Your specie had either disappeared, or was purchased for its weight in gold. Cambon, who perhaps is an honest citizen, but certainly is in talents beneath the confidence you have placed in him in the department of the finances, saw no other remedy than the possession of the riches of this fertile country. He proposed to you the fatal decree of the 15th of December; you accepted it unanimously; notwithstanding each among you to whom

I have spoken on the subject, has told me that he disapproved of it, and that the decree was unjust. One of my four memorials was directed against this decree-it was not read in the convention; and the same Cambon endeavoured to render my remonstrances odious and criminal, by observing at the tribunal, that I opposed a veto tớ the decree of the convention. This decree you confirmed by that of the 30th of December, and charged your commissioners to see it strictly executed. Conformably to your orders, the executive power sent at least thirty commissionersthe choice was bad, if we except a few honest men, whose civism is perhaps doubted, because they seek to lessen the odiousness of their functions. The greater part are either rash, tyrannical, or men without reflection, whom a brutal and insolent zeal has constantly led beyond their functions. Agents of tyranny have been spread over the whole surface of Belgium. The military commandants, in obedience to the decree, have been obliged to employ, at their request, the forces entrusted to them; and these exactions exasperated to the utmost height the dispositions of the Belgians. Hence terror, and perhaps hatred, were substituted to that mild fraternity with which our first steps in Belgium were accompanied; and at the moment of our ill successes these agents were most violent and unjust.

You have been misled with respect to the union of several parts of Belgium to France. You deemed it voluntary because your information thought you could carry off the superfluous

untrue. was

Hence you

superfluous church-plate, without doubt to defray the expences of the war. You regarded the Belgians from the time as Frenchmen; but had they even been so, it would still have been necessary to wait, until the abandonment of this plate should be a voluntary sacrifice, without which, to carry it off by force became in their eyes à sacrilege. This is just what has happened. The priests and monks have profited by this act of imprudence, and we have been regarded as robbers flying from our foes, insomuch that the commonaltics of the villages are every where arming against us. This is not a war of aristocracy, for our revolution favours the peasants, and still the peasants are arming against us, and the tocsin sounds in every direction. To them it is a sacred war; to us a criminal one.

We are at this moment surrounded by enemies, as you will see by my reports to the war minister. You will at the same time see the first steps necessity has obliged me to take, to save the French army, the national honour, the republic itself! Representatives of the nation, I invoke your duty and your probity. I invoke the sacred principles maintained in the declaration of the

rights of man, and impatiently wait your decision. At this mo. ment you hold in your hands the lot of the empire, and I am persuaded, that truth and virtue will guide your decisions, and that you will not suffer your armies to be tarnished by crimes of which they must become the victims.

The general in chief of the northern army, DUMOURIER.

General Dumourier to the French Nation.

INCE the commencement of

myself to the maintenance of the liberty and honour of the nation.

The services I rendered in the Minister of foreign affairs during year 1792, are the most memorable. three months, I elevated and sus tained the dignity of the French name throughout all Europe. I was calumniated by an odious cabal, by whom I was charged with having plundered six millions of livres destined for secret services. I have proved, that of this sum I did not expend half a million.

Having quitted the career of politics towards the close of the month of June, I commanded a small army in the department of the north. This department I was ordered to quit with my troops, at the very time the Austrians entered in force that part of the republic, I disobeyed the order, saved the department, and an attempt was made to come on me by surprise, for the purpose of conveying me to the citadel of Metz, where I was to be condemned by a council of war to suffer death.

On the 28th of August I took upon me, in Champagne, the command of an army of twenty thousand men, weak, and without I arrested the progress of eighty either discipline or organization. thousand Prussians and Hessians, and forced them to retreat after of their army. I was then the sathey had sacrificed the one half

viour of France; and then it was that the most wicked of men, the opprobrium of Frenchmen-in a word, Marat, began to calumniate

me