Jean-Baptiste-Jacques L'AIGNEL

L'Élite des loix commerciales, Depuis la découverte du Nouveau-Monde ou de l'Amérique en 1492, jusqu'à la convocation des États-Généraux de la France en 1789 ; Avec des suppressions, corrections et additions proposées pour une Législation nouvelle, populaire et uniforme : Le tout rédigé en Sommaires alphabétiques… Préfaces

Brand: Chez Patry
SKU: 89747
Price: 7500 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Jean-Baptiste-Jacques L'AIGNEL

[The Elite of Commercial Laws, from the Discovery of the New World or America in 1492 to the Convening of the Estates-General of France in 1789; with Deletions, Corrections, and Additions Proposed for a New, Popular, and Uniform Legislation: All Compiled in Alphabetical Summaries… Prefaces]

Chez Patry|Le Havre • Paris • Rouen • Caen 1786-1797|19.2 x 25 cm|21 fasciclues reliés en 1 volume

€7,500

⬨ 89747

Le Havre, Montivilliers and various places, 1786-1797. Twenty-one separately printed pamphlets bound together in one quarto volume, 19.2 x 25 cm.

Rare sammelband assembled by Jean-Baptiste-Jacques L'Aignel himself from the printed fragments of the legal, economic and political work to which he devoted the final decades of his life. Prospectuses, prefaces, prolegomena, speeches and appendices had been issued separately, mostly in Le Havre or nearby Montivilliers, to accompany a much larger undertaking that was never to reach its intended final form. Gathered here by their author, these scattered texts recover the unity of the project from which they arose. The present volume ranks among the most complete collections known, alongside the copy preserved at the Bibliothèque municipale du Havre, whose contents differ slightly.

Contemporary full marbled blond calf, spine with five raised bands framed by partly faded gilt rules and decorated with gilt double compartments, black morocco lettering-pieces, partly faded gilt roll to the board edges, red edges. Worming in the lower margin of the final section, not affecting the text; small restorations to the boards.

The collection comprises:

Souscriptions proposées au public par le jurisconsulte L'Aignel, pour ses deux ouvrages intitulés : le premier, les Loix commerciales ; le deuxième, la France commerçante. 1er avril 1797. 4 pp.
Loix commerciales et France commerçante. Adresse aux deux Conseils du Corps législatif. 1er avril 1797. 12 pp.
Discours historique sur le commerce, par Savary. 44 pp.
Discours sur la navigation, par L'Aignel. 71 pp.
Les Phares de Normandie et du Havre, allumés à l'avénement de Louis XVI, par L'Aignel. Ode présentée à Sa Majesté étant aux Phares du Havre, le 28 juin 1786. 8 pp.
Les Livres XX, XXI & XXII de l'Esprit des Loix par Montesquieu, relatifs au Commerce, considéré comme une des bases de l'Ordre social. Montivilliers, Imprimerie des Administrations municipales, s.d. 112 and 6 pp.
Analyse satyrique de l'Esprit des loix, par M. de Bonneval. 1 unnumbered leaf.
L'Ordre social. Prospectus. L'Ordre social, propre à tout Gouvernement quelqu'il soit, républicain ou Monarchique ; distribué en neuf Législations proposées : précédé de l'Examen des loix hébraïques, romaines, françaises, et autres, tant anciennes que modernes, par le jurisconsulte L'Aignel. Au Havre, chez l'Auteur, de l'imprimerie de Patry, [1795]. 1 unnumbered leaf and 27 pp.
La Confédération générale de l'Europe, ou Extrait du projet de paix perpétuelle de l'abbé de Saint-Pierre. Montivilliers, Imprimerie du District, [circa 1796]. 15 pp.
L'Ordre social, propre à tout gouvernement, et distribué en neuf Législations, par le jurisconsulte L'Aignel. S.l., [1795]. 4 pp.
Les Pairies populaires et leurs assemblées proposées par le jurisconsulte L'Aignel. S.l., [1796]. 20 pp.
Le Comice patriotique et universel. Au Havre, Imprimerie de Le Picquier, [circa 1795]. 23 pp.
Les Hospices, ci-devant dits Hôpitaux, Aumôneries, Maladreries, Léproseries, Hôtels ou Maisons-Dieu. S.l., [circa 1795]. 32 pp.
Les Tributs directs et fixés. Observation préliminaire. Au Havre, Imprimerie de Le Picquier, [circa 1795]. 27 pp.
L'Appendice de la France commerçante en 1789, par le jurisconsulte L'Aignel. Au Havre, chez l'Auteur, Imprimerie de Patry, [1796]. 2 unnumbered leaves and 4 pp.
Le Spectacle de la France, lors de la convocation des États Généraux en 1789. S.l., [1796]. XII pp.
Remarques particulières sur le gouvernement français, par le président Hénault. Montivilliers, Imprimerie des Administrations municipales, [circa 1795-1796]. 54 pp.
Histoire sommaire du droit français, par Gabriel Argou. Montivilliers, Imprimerie du District, [circa 1795-1796]. 56 pp.
Le Spectacle de la France, lors de la convocation des États Généraux en 1789. S.l., [circa 1795]. 107 pp.
Commerce général de la France en 1789. S.l.n.d. 23 pp.
Salines et sel, particulièrement en France. S.l.n.d. 44 pp.

On the first flyleaf, L'Aignel also pasted an octavo printed leaf containing two poems written for Bonaparte and Joséphine during their stay in Le Havre on 15 Brumaire, Year XI, 6 November 1802. Added five years after the latest pamphlets in the volume, this leaf is significant: the collection was not simply bound to preserve brochures that had become difficult to assemble. L'Aignel continued to augment it, adding a final document to what remained a living personal file.

Its provenance extends this coherence. A manuscript note on the pastedown records that the volume remained in the family until 6 November 1882, when René L'Aignel, the author's grandson and, like him, a lawyer in Le Havre, presented it to an E. Seguin. From the hand that first assembled the pamphlets to that of the descendant who parted with them nearly a century later, the volume thus preserves an almost entirely family history.

Born in Le Havre in 1741, Jean-Baptiste-Jacques L'Aignel belonged to a provincial world in which the bar, municipal government and literary societies still naturally overlapped. A lawyer, perpetual syndic of the Le Havre bar and maire-échevin according to the titles he himself claimed on his publications, he divided his interests between jurisprudence, political economy and belles-lettres.

He also wrote verse. His ode Les Phares de Normandie et du Havre, allumés à l'avénement de Louis XVI had been distinguished by the Académie du Puy de Rouen in 1777. Nine years later, L'Aignel presented it to the King during Louis XVI's visit to Le Havre on 28 June 1786. Within the present volume, the piece forms an early and highly personal landmark: before the legislator and reformer appears the lawyer-poet of a port city celebrating his sovereign.

Commercial law, however, was to occupy the greater part of L'Aignel's intellectual life. L'Élite des loix commerciales was intended to retrace the history of French commercial legislation from the discovery of the New World to the convocation of the Estates General, eliminate what its author considered obsolete, and propose a new, "popular and uniform" body of law. La France commerçante complemented this undertaking, while L'Ordre social gradually extended his reflections to political representation, taxation, hospitals and European peace. The whole was intended to fill several volumes, but illness prevented L'Aignel from completing its architecture.

The twenty-one pieces preserve each stage of that undertaking. L'Aignel extracts Montesquieu's books on commerce, returns to Savary, Argou and President Hénault, surrounds them with writings of his own, and attempts to incorporate them into the system he is constructing. Printers change, titles shift, and the publications move between prospectus, preface, extract and treatise. The very dispersal that now accounts for the extreme rarity of the individual pamphlets also allows us to follow a body of thought developing through revision and accumulation rather than according to the fixed plan of a finished book.

The Revolution therefore passes through the volume without bringing the work to an end. Texts conceived around the commercial law of the Ancien Régime give way to the projects of L'Ordre social and addresses to the new institutions. Finally, the leaf of 1802 brings L'Aignel back to his native Le Havre before another regime. The ode presented to Louis XVI in 1786 finds its counterpart sixteen years later in verses for Bonaparte and Joséphine.

Rare collection assembled and augmented by its author, then preserved in his family for nearly a century. Here the twenty-one pamphlets are no longer merely the scattered remains of an unfinished work: gathered by L'Aignel himself, they form the working archive of his intellectual life, from the closing years of the Ancien Régime to the Consulate.