On the morrow early in the session, Billaud-Varenne moved, and the Convention decreed, that “all public acts were to be dated from the first year of the Republic.” A new seal of State bearing the words “_République de France_” decided upon and national colors were proposed, but not adopted.[157] The journals took little notice of this new name with which France had been baptized. Nevertheless, the members of the Convention seemed to take it as a matter of course and to make repeated use of the term Republic. For instance, on September 22, it appeared in the following decree: “The National Convention decrees that the committees of the legislative assembly and the members of the executive council shall render an account to the National Convention of the state of their work and of the condition of the different parts of the French Republic....” The report of the Minister of the Interior, M. Gorsas, in the session of September 23, contained this report of the state of public opinion: “The will of the French is pronounced. Liberty and equality are their supreme good; they will sacrifice all to preserve these. They have a horror for the crimes of the nobles, the hypocrisy of the priests, the tyranny of kings. Kings! they wish no more of them, they know that outside of a Republic there is no liberty.” Again on September 24, the Convention decreed “that there shall be named six commissioners charged with rendering as full an account as shall be possible, of the present state of the _Republic_ and that of Paris.” On September 25, the Convention declared “the French Republic is one and indivisible.”[158] Here we have passed to the period in which the Republic had become an accepted fact for France. Robespierre said truly that it had “glided in furtively among the factions,” and we may say that to Frenchmen, interested in the national defence, it was a welcome change. Gouverneur Morris is authority for this in a note of October, 1792, in which he said: “These are the outlines made use of on either side to convince the public that each is exclusively the author of a Republic which the people find themselves possessed of by a kind of magic, or at least, a sleight of hand, and which, nevertheless, they are as fond of as if it were their own offspring.”[159] It would be interesting to know how completely this Parisian enthusiasm was shared by the nation. Grave objections may have been offered, but it soon came about that to be disloyal to the Republic was to be a foe of liberty and equality, and, worse yet, a traitor to France. So far as we are able to discover, the army accepted the Republic with enthusiasm. On September 9, General Valence wrote to Dumouriez _that he would run to the Republic with transport_. Prieur (de la Marne) awakened enthusiasm in the army of the Ardennes by announcing to them on September 29, the news of the birth of the Republic.[160] And a report from the camp of volunteers at Châlons speaks of a like worthy sentiment.[161]