Législation de l'île de la Réunion. Répertoire raisonné des lois, ordonnances royales, ordonnances locales, décrets coloniaux, décrets impériaux, règlements et arrêtés d'un intérêt général, en vigueur dans cette colonie.

Second edition, partly original as it was revised and enlarged, and the most complete form of this celebrated manual of local law for the island of Réunion (cf. Ryckebusch 2407; Toussaint & Adolphe D439).

The work is illustrated with three folding tables inserted out of text (two in the fifth volume, one in the last).

Contemporary half-sheep bindings in dark green, smooth spines gilt-tooled with dotted ornaments, fillets and garlands, gilt rolls at head and foot, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, sprinkled edges.

Some rubbing to a few headcaps and spines, the upper headcap of the sixth volume torn, restorations to several spines.

The work covers every legal matter relating to the colony: stockbrokers, commercial and maritime brokers, colonial workshops, barristers, attorneys, lighterage, small craft, canals, road workers, hunting and the carrying of arms, the Napoleonic Code, the codes of civil procedure, commerce, criminal procedure and criminal law, concession rights, the Privy Council, consuls and consular jurisdictions, direct taxation, distillation and distilleries, colonial land administration, customs, registration, sugar-cane exploitation, rural constables, colonial gendarmerie, hospitals, maritime registration, public instruction, justices of the peace, the merchant navy, colonial militias, notaries, octroi, fishing, the Plaine des Palmistes and the Plaine des Cafres, police, bridges and roads, postal services, the press, the judicial system, tobacco, labour, public works, the colonial bank, etc. It concludes with an alphabetical and analytical index, followed by a chronological table. Several articles relate to slavery: history and legislation of slavery and emancipation (vol. II, pp. 634–643), people of colour (III, 130–137), colonial compensation (III, 166–169) and the slave trade (V, 294–302). The three folding tables inserted out of text are entitled respectively: Statistique des produits des cultures – Situation numérique des immigrants introduits à la Réunion – Tarif de solde (officiers, sous-officiers, soldats). The volumes bear as author’s name: Delabarre de Nanteuil, followed by his titles: doctor of law, former bâtonnier of the Order of Barristers at the Imperial Court of Réunion, member of the Légion d’honneur. According to the BnF catalogue, this would be Pierre-Antoine Auguste, comte de La Barre de Nanteuil (1802–1878); however, other authors attribute the Législation de l’île de la Réunion to Louis-Eustache-Théodore II de La Barre de Nanteuil, born in Saint-Domingue before 1802 and deceased in 1871 in Port-Louis (Mauritius).