Who has set loose upon our country, plunderers, refrac-. tory priests, and emigrant traitors? Who has purchased with gold, a part of our garrisons, corrupted the citizens and the generals? Who has thrown, by assignats and intrigues, into our fifteen battalions of the second levies of Paris, those dregs of Piedmontese, Germans, Genoese, Neapolitans, the scum of foreign countries, for the purpose of betraying our armed brothers, and of tarnishing if they had been able, the Parisian name, the first which has been written by the hand of liberty, in the sacred annals of the revolution? Who has so liberally supplied the villains of the Vendée with muskets, powder, cannon on which are written, the names of those mercantile tyrants of Europe? The British government.

Who has bought over, and seduced the guardians of a seaport, belonging to the Republick, and thrown into fanaticism the people of Toulon, in order to annihilate our marine, and to destroy the inhabitants of that beautiful city?

Who has inundated with floods of corrupting gold, an opulent and industrious town, which they have instigated to rebellion, in order to force us to destroy with our own hands, this theatre of arts, and of the finest manufactures of Europe, and then to possess themselves, of the trade of silks of Piedmont, to ruin our industry, to invite our workmen over to them, and to rob us even of our genius for the manufacturing arts to which Europe had become tributary?

Who have betrayed the interests of their own nation to make war on a people who would have gloried in their esteem, and a more intimate alliance with them? This crime was reserved for the British government.

Citizens, the hatred of kings and of Carthage founded the constitution of the Roman republick; the hatred of kings, of the emigrants, of the nobles, and of the English, must consolidate the French constitution.

Let the spectacle of so many crimes rouse Europe from her lethargy; let the governments which are slaves to England cease to slumber, and let them at last perceive, near them, the precipice opened by that corrupting and corrupted government, who buy and sel Imen. cities, and ports, as we traffick in vile cattle, who are stockjobbers of people, as the financiers of the Rue Vivienne are stock

jobbers of paper; who sport with governments as the negro merchant sports with the inhabitants of Guinea, and who would wish to traffick in the political constitutions of Europe, as they do in the merchandises extorted from India.

Let the nations of the north, above all, hearken to the voice of the National Convention of France.

Here is the secret of the English.

To annihilate the maritime powers by the means of one another, the French navy by that of Spain, and then the Spanish navy when cut off from the assistance of that of France; Holland belongs to them, the Dutch are the slaves of England. As to the marine of the North, the commercial vessels of the northern nations, from Holland as far as Russia, must pass through the channel, which is between Dunkirk and the English coasts, and consequently it is of importance to England, to have ports on each side of this strait. The atrocious audacity with which she has seized vessels, belonging to the northern powers must demonstrate to all nations, how much her designs augment their dangers, and menace the safety of their commerce, for time present and to come.

Frenchmen, Europeans, neutral powers, northern nations, you have all the same interest as ourselves, in the salvation of France. Carthage agitated Italy, London agitates Europe; it is a wolf placed on the side of the continent to devour it; it is a political excrescence which liberty has undertaken to destroy.

The navigation act, that we propose, is the effectual and true means of attaining that object; it is founded on the rights of each nation; it is founded in your most evident and incontestable interest: it is founded upon the most imperious duties of the National Convention, that of establishing the prosperity of France, and destroying the Republick's most mortal enemies.

Let us then take a cursory view, of the advantages which call for the promulgation of the navigation act. They are to aggrandize our commercial system, less to repel the industry of England, than to substitute our own in its stead, to multiply our means of navigation, to create an astonishing marine, and to tell to every nation that they should communicate directly with France, is only to

present a general view to them; I pass to more direct advantages.

From 1651, when the English navigation act passed, all their merchants, all their politicians, all their economists, Child, Sheffield, even Smith himself agree that it is to this act, that England owes the prosperity, the superiority of her marine. This opinion has been examined, several times in France, by the citizen Ducher, who has presented to us his ideas on this important subject. The example has been given, experience is had, and nature offers to you an immense population with an army of intrepid seamen-enormous capitals-great forests-with assured relations in the north, with iron mines-with your woods of Corsica-your numerous ports-with your colonies, with your manufactures, two hundred leagues of coasts to populate by shipping-and the two seas to traverse in; such then is the act of navigation decreed by nature-it is your province to decree the act of navigation, which policy and commerce require.

The first advantage. France should discourage all second hand commerce carried on by other than her own vessels.

It is a direct commerce that we must have, and it is this kind of commerce, that England owes to her navigation

act.

It would be humiliating to France; it would be declaring her impolitick and impotent, were she to receive commercial objects by any other vessels than those of the country which has manufactured or produced them. By this means you will attract to your ports, and be enabled to form useful connexions with other nations. I will cite to you but one plain example. Why is there in the ports of London, Plymouth, Liverpool, more American vessels than in the ports of France ? It is because we do not import in our own vessels, or those of the United States of America, the rice, tobacco, potashes, oils, and other articles of their growth. Why is there in the Thames more American vessels laden with grain and flour, than in our Atlantick ports? Because Neckar and Roland purchased at second hand, and seemed to be instructed to support the English commercial system, instead of purchasing directly from the United States of America.

We have left to the English the care of going to seek or to receive for us the tobaccoes of Virginia, and the rice of Carolina, as well as the grain of Pennsylvania, giving them the first profit. The English make payment with their manufactures-which is giving them the second profit. We, Frenchmen, purchase these tobaccoes and rice from the hands of the English, for specie, or at an enormous price in assignats, which they speculate with on ourselves giving them here a third profit. A direct navigation, embraced by the navigation act, will restore to you all these advantages and rights.

As though it was not enough to purchase at second hand, we did not carry even our own merchandises. The mercantile marine of England was in our pay, and by us continued in it. A navigation act will destroy this abuse, and reinstate us in the receipt of these profits, impoliticallavished on the English and Hollanders.

Are we then without seamen and without marines, or rather have not our seamen, our merchants, a right to re-. proach us with their misery, and to obtain from us the preference to perfidious foreigners? Let us secure to our marines their occupations-suffer not the inhabitants of Amsterdam to fish and navigate for you any longer; nor let the English spin longer for our use, the wools and cottons which they purchase even in our ports.

Let foreigners no longer bring that which our fellow citizens can fabricate and transport as well and better than they. Then would you have numerous artisans, manufactures brought to perfection, your ports filled with shipping and marines. Let us prohibit all traffick on our frontiers, and cherish our navigation.

Let false alarms cease, by considering that our navigation will always be sufficient, when joined to that of the states from whom we shall draw productions. If our vessels, and those of the Americans can bring us tobacco for our consumption-why suffer the English to come in as a third party in the transportation of it? If our vessels and those of Spain are sufficient to bring her wools, why permit a Hollander to come and transport them, and thereby render ourselves tributary to him? And admitting that our navigation should in the first instance prove insufficient, the proposed act will induce that of other nations to come directly to us, and we shall endeavour ourselves to make

our own sufficient, by accelerating the progress of ship-
building. There is no other means than under the patron-
age of this important act, by which our marine can rise
to that degree of value and activity, which the destinies
of France may require.

Second advantage. Here the national constitution pre-
sents to you all the riches which it ought to secure to us.
Are we not yet weary of being the tributaries of foreign
industry, of shamefully being the supporters of the vessels
of our atrocious and laborious neighbours? Shall we
never become tired of giving subsistence to their seamen,
of seeing our most cruel enemies plough the ocean at our
expense, and rendering us the slaves of the luxury and
trinkets, which their industrious avarice induces them
incessantly to fabricate for France?

You are desirous of having a marine, for without a marine there can be no colonies; and without colonies there can be no commercial prosperity: Then, in order to have such a marine as is necessary for the most astonishing republick that ever existed, we must have vessels; further, we must build them; still further, we must have seamen, and the fisheries furnish them.-The fisheries and shipbuilding are the cradle of the marine. The English have experienced this 150 years, and their marine is the most brilliant.

To force shipbuilding, is to create that rare and valuable reunion of men and artificers, by whose hands are produced new or repaired vessels.

To force shipbuilding, is to establish shipyards-is to form magazines-to multiply useful hands-to produce artists and workmen of every kind, who may be found at once for the peaceable speculations of commerce, and for the terrible wants of war.

To force shipbuilding at home, is to augment navigation, by the necessity of seeking timber, cordage, and the other matters necessary in various parts of France, or for the foreigner;-is to increase the vessels for transportation; is to augment the number of sailors; is to augment among us the benefits of freight; is to centuple our exchanges, our commercial relations and our profits; is to diffuse the tri-coloured flag over all seas.

For a navigating people to purchase its marine abroad, would be a strange speculation, as the marine would al