A noteworthy French lawyer, politician, and historian, born at Aunay; began to practise in Paris at the age of twenty-six; becoming known in politics, he gained considerable renown by certain works on French law and by his advocacy of the claims of the liberated slaves in the French West Indies; entering the Chamber of Deputies after the Revolution of July 1830, he set himself to oppose the Jesuits and to further freedom; "The Religious Conditions of France and Europe" and a "History of Jerusalem" were among his later works; he died at Paris (1792-1857).