Pierre Louis Roederer

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Image:Pierre Louis Roederer.png Comte Pierre Louis Roederer (February 15, 1754 – December 17, 1835) was a French politician and economist, politically active in the era of the French Revolution and First French Republic.

Born at Metz, the son of a magistrate, he became at the age of twenty-five councillor at the parlement of Metz and was commissioned in 1787 to draw up a list of remonstrances. His 1787 work Suppression des douanes intérieures advocated the suppression of internal customs houses; the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica describes it as "an elaborate treatise on the laws of commerce and on the theory of customs imposts". In 1788 he published the boldly liberal pamphlet Députation aux États généraux (Deputation to the Estates-General). Partly on the strength of this he was elected deputy to the Estates-General by the Third Estate of the bailliage of Metz.

In the National Constituent Assembly he was a member of the committee of taxes (comité des contributions), prepared a scheme for a new system of taxation, drew up a law on patents, occupied himself with the laws relating to stamps and assignats, and was successful in opposing the introduction of an income tax. After the close of the Constituent Assembly he was elected, on November 11, 1791, procureur général syndic of the départment of Paris. The directory of the départment, of which the duc de la Rochefoucauld was president, was at this time in pronounced opposition to the advanced views that dominated the Legislative Assembly and the Jacobin Club, and Roederer was not altogether in touch with his colleagues. Thus he took no share in signing their protest against the law against the non-juring clergy, as a violation of religious liberty.

But the directory did not long survive. With the growing anarchy of the capital many of its members resigned and fled, and their places could not be filled up. Roederer himself has left in his Chronique des cinquante jours (Chronicle of twenty days, 1832) an account of the pitiable part played by the directory of the départment in the critical period between the failed insurrection of June 20, 1792 and the successful insurrection of August 10. Seeing the perilous drift of things, he had tried to get into touch with the king; and it was on his advice that Louis, on the fatal 10th, took refuge in the Assembly. His conduct arousing suspicion, he went into hiding, and did not emerge again until after the fall of Robespierre.

In 1796 he was made a member of the Institut de France, was appointed to a professorship of political economy, and founded the Journal d'économie publique, de morale et de legislation. Having escaped deportation at the time of the coup d'état of 18 Fructidor, he took part in Napoleon's coup d'état of 18 Brumaire and was appointed by Napoleon member of the council of state and senator . Under the Empire, Roederer, whose public influence was very considerable, was Joseph Bonaparte's minister of finance at Naples (1806), administrator of the Grand Duchy of Berg (1810), and imperial commissary in the south of France. During the Hundred Days he was created a peer of France.

The Restoration government stripped him of his offices and dignities, but he recovered the title of peer of France in 1832, following the July Revolution of 1830.

Roederer's son, Baron Antoine Marie Roederer (1782-1865), also became a politician of some note.

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Works

  • Louis XII (1820)
  • François I (1825)
  • Comédies historiques, de Louis XII à la mort de Henri IV (1827-30)
  • L'Esprit de la révolution de 1789 (1831)
  • La Première et la deuxième année du consulat de Bonaparte (The first and second year of Bonaparte's consulate, 1802)
  • Chronique des cinquante jours, an account of the events of the 10th of August 1792
  • Mémoire pour servir à l'histoire de la société polie en France (1835)
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References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition{{#if:{{{article|}}}| article {{#if:{{{url|}}}|[{{{url|}}}}} "{{{article}}}"{{#if:{{{url|}}}|]}}{{#if:{{{author|}}}| by {{{author}}}}}}}, a publication now in the public domain. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, in turn, cites:

  • Roederer's Œuvres, edited by his son (Paris, 1853 seq.)
  • Sainte Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. viii.
  • M. Mignet, Notices historiques (Paris, 1853).

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