A rare Voltaire political pamphlet

[Voltaire (= François Marie Arouet 1694-1778)].

Lettres américaines sur les parlemens.

[No place, no name], 1770-1771.

12°. 3-44 pp. [lacks first blank].

Contemporary marbled calf with gold-tooled spine, red edges, marbled endpapers.

First edition of one of Voltaire’s most important political pamphlets of the Maupeou era. Cast in the form of a fictional correspondence between two inhabitants of Port-au-Prince in Saint-Domingue, identified only as R** and T***, the work discusses the constitutional crisis provoked by Chancellor Maupeou’s suppression of the French parlements in 1771. The colonial setting serves primarily as a literary device, allowing Voltaire to examine contemporary French affairs from the perspective of distant observers.

The pamphlet belongs to a series of writings in which Voltaire defended the reforms of Chancellor René Nicolas Charles Augustin de Maupeou (1714–1792). Whereas many contemporaries regarded the suppression of the parlements as an attack on traditional liberties, Voltaire viewed the hereditary magistracy as a privileged and obstructive institution that hindered justice and reform. He therefore welcomed Maupeou’s attempt to reorganise the judicial system and repeatedly defended the reforms in his political writings.

Published anonymously, the work was later attributed to Voltaire and is now universally accepted as his. It provides a vivid example of his engagement with one of the great political controversies of the late Ancien Régime and illustrates the extent to which Enlightenment debates extended beyond philosophy and religion into questions of law, government, and judicial authority.

[Bound with:]

• [Athanase-Alexandre Clement de Boissy]. Le maire du palais. [No place, no name], 1771.
• L’accomplissement des prophéties. Pour servir de suite à l’ouvrage intitulé Le point de vue, écrit interessant la maison de Bourbon. [No place, no name], 1772.
• Correspondance secrète et familière de M. de Maupéou avec M. de Sorhouet, conseiller du nouveau parlement. [No place, no name, no date].

Condition: binding slightly rubbed, stamped exlibris on verso of title of work 1, otherwise in good condition.

Literature:

Sébastien G. Longchamp,  et al. Mémoires sur Voltaire: et sur ses ouvrages. Frankrijk, Aimé André, 1826, p. 324.

Sue Peabody, ‘There Are No Slaves in France’: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime, New York, 1997; online edn, Oxford Academic, 3 Oct. 2011.