CHASTELLUX, François-Jean de.

£1,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

De la Félicité publique. Ou Considérations sur le sort des hommes dans les différentes Epoques de l'histoire. First editions of three works on the characteristic Enlightenment themes of human liberty and the freedom of the press, written by a trio of moderate and broadly pro-American polemicists.a) CHASTELLUX, François-Jean de. De la Félicité publique. Ou Considérations sur le sort des hommes dans les différentes Epoques de l'histoire. Pp. vi, xviii, 238, iii-viii, 216. Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1772.b) MORELLET, André. Réflexions sur les avantages de la liberté d'écrire et d'imprimer sur les matieres de l'administration. Pp. [2], 72. London: les Freres Estienne, 1775. c) MIRABEAU, Honoreì-Gabriel de Riqueti, comte de. Sur la Liberté de la Presse, imité de l'Anglois, de Milton. Pp. 66. London: [no publisher,] 1788.In De La Félicité publique, François-Jean de Chastellux (1734-1788) examines the progress of human societies and the proper conditions for achieving public happiness. Voltaire famously ranked the work above even Montesquieu's De l'Esprit des Loix as a modern contribution to human knowledge. Chastellux, a career soldier in the ancien régime, served in the American Revolution as major general in the French expeditionary forces. In this capacity, he liaised extensively with George Washington: the two men remained friends for the rest of their lives. The author of the second work, André Morellet (1727-1819), primarily an economist, associated with the philosophes and

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