Evidently, then, the deputies of France must intrust the details of administration to responsible Ministers, though some directing agency seemed needed as a spur to energy and a check against royalist plots.

In brief, the Committee of Public Safety, purged of its more dangerous powers, was to furnish the model for a new body of five members, termed the Directory.

This organism, which was to give its name to the whole period 1795-1799, was not the Ministry.

There was no Ministry as we now use the term.
There were Ministers who were responsible individually for their departments of State: but they never met for deliberation, or communicated with the Legislature; they were only heads of departments, who were responsible individually to the Directors.

These five men formed a powerful committee, deliberating in private on the whole policy of the State and on all the work of the Ministers.