(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1167580451/?tag=2022091-20
Odilon Barrot was born at Villefort, Lozere, France on the 19th of September 1791. He belonged to a legal family, his father, an advocate of Toulouse, having been a member of the Convention who had voted against the death of Louis XVI. Odilon Barrot's earliest recollections were of the October insurrection of 1795.
Barrot was sent to the military school of Saint-Cyr, but presently removed to the Lycee Napoleon to study law.
Odilon was called to the Parisian bar in 1811. He was placed in the office of the conventionel Jean Mailhe, who was advocate before the council of state and the court of cassation and was proscribed at the second restoration. Barrot eventually succeeded him in both positions. His dissatisfaction with the government of the restoration was shown in his conduct of some political trials. For his opposition in 1820 to a law by which any person might be arrested and detained on a warrant signed by three ministers, he was summoned before a court of assize, but acquitted. Although intimate with Lafayette and others, he took no actual share in their schemes for the overthrow of the government, but in 1827 he joined the association known as Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera. He presided over the banquet given by the society to the 221 deputies who had signed the address of March 1830 to Charles X, and threatened to reply to force by force. After the ordinances of the 26th of July 1830, he joined the National Guard and took an active part in the revolution. As secretary of the municipal commission, which sat at the hotel-de-ville and formed itself into a provisional government, he was charged to convey to the chamber of deputies a protest embodying the terms which the advanced Liberals wished to impose on the king to be elected. He supported the idea of a constitutional monarchy against the extreme Republicans, and he was appointed one of the three commissioners chosen to escort Charles X out of France. On his return he was nominated prefect of the department of the Seine. His concessions to the Parisian mob and his extreme gentleness towards those who demanded the prosecution of the ministers of Charles X led to an unflattering comparison with Jerome Petion under similar circumstances. Louis Philippe's government was far from satisfying his desires for reform, and he persistently urged the "broadening of the bases of the monarchy, " while he protested his loyalty to the dynasty. He was returned to the chamber of deputies for the department of Eure in 1831. The day after the demonstration of June 1832 on the occasion of the funeral of General Lamarque, he made himself indirectly the mouthpiece of the Democrats in an interview with Louis Philippe, which is given at length in his Memoires. Subsequently in pleading before the court of cassation on behalf of one of the rioters, he secured the annulling of the judgments given by the council of war. The death of the duke of Orleans in 1842 was a blow to Barrot's party, which sought to substitute the regency of the duchess of Orleans for that of the duke of Nemours in the event of the succession of the count of Paris. In 1846 Barrot made a tour in the Near East, returning in time to take part a second time in the preliminaries of revolution. He organized banquets of the disaffected in the Various cities of France, and demanded electoral reform to avoid revolution. He did nor foresee the strength of the outbreak for which his eloquence had prepared the way, and clung to the programme of 1830. He tried to support the regency of the duchess in the chamber on the 24th of February, only to find that the time was past for half-measures.
Napoleon became the President of the republic on 20 December 1848 and appointed a ministry that included Barrot and the conservative Frédéric Alfred Pierre, comte de Falloux. But Barrot was dismissed as soon as he had served the president's purpose of avoiding open conflict. After the coup d'état of December 1851 Barrot was one of those who sought to accuse Napoleon of high treason. He was imprisoned for a short time and retired from active politics for some ten years.
Barrot was the president of the society Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera. He was also one of the managers of the “banquets” campaign, which attempted to pressure the government into extending the franchise. He was one of the three commissioners of the new government who escorted the former king, Charles X, to Cherbourg on his way into exile and headed the first ministry called by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte and also became minister of justice.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
