Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/549

Rh  1em  DUMONT,, a well-known publicist, was born in France in the 1 7th century, the precise date being unknown. He followed the profession of arms ; but, not obtaining pro motion so rapidly as he expected, he quitted the service and travelled through different parts of Europe. He stopped in Holland with the intention of there publishing an account of his travels. But in the interval, at the request of his bookseller, he wrote and published several pamphlets, which were eagerly sought after, owing to the unceremonious manner in which he treated the ministry of France. This freedom having deprived him of all hope of employment in his own country, he thought of forming a permanent establishment in that where he resided, and accordingly commenced a course of lectures on public law. The project succeeded far beyond his expectations ; and some useful compilations which he published about the same period made him favourably known in other countries. The emperor appointed him his historiographer, and some time afterwards conferred on him the title of Baron de Carlscroun. He died at Vienna in 1726, at an advanced age. Dumont wrote with facility, but his style is deficient in vigour and correctness ; his works, however, contain a great number of documents valuable for history.

1em  DUMONT, (1759-1829), a political writer celebrated chiefly for his literary connection with Mirabeau and Jeremy Bentham, was born on the 18th July 1759 at Geneva, of which his family had been citizens of good repute from the days of Calvin. Shortly after his birth his father died, leaving a widow and four children wholly unprovided for. But the widow, though placed in such destitute circumstances, found means to send Etienne to the college of Geneva, where he distinguished himself both by his ability and by his independent spirit. In a short time he not only defrayed the cost of his own education, but even contributed to the support of the family, by acting as repetiteur, or private tutor to his comrades. Having completed his academical course, he took clerical orders; and in the year 1781 he was chosen one of the pastors of the city, where his talents as a preacher soon attracted general notice, and gave promise of his becoming one of the most brilliant and persuasive of pulpit orators. But the political troubles which disturbed Geneva in 1782 suddenly turned the course of his life into a different channel. He belonged to the liberals or democrats, and the triumph of the aristocratical party, through the interference of the courts of France and Sardinia, made residence in his native town impossible to him, though he was not among the number of the proscribed. He therefore became a voluntary exile, and went to join his mother and sisters at St Petersburg, a city to which many Genevese had resorted. In this he was probably influenced in part by the example of his townsman Lefort, who was the first tutor, minister, and general of the czar. At St Petersburg he filled for eighteen months with great acceptance the office of pastor of the French church. In 1785 he removed to London, Lord Shelburne, then a minister of state, having invited him to undertake the education of his sons. It was at the house of Lord Shelburne, afterwards marquis of Lansdowne, where he was treated as a friend or rather member of the family, that he became acquainted with some of the most illustrious men of the country, amongst whom may be mentioned Fox, Sheridan, Lord Holland, and Sir Samuel Ilomilly. With the last of these he formed a close and enduring friendship, which had an important influence on his life and pursuits. In 1788 Dumont visited Paris in company with Eomilly. During a sojoiirn of two months in that city he had almost daily intercourse with Mirabeau; and a certain affinity of talents and pursuits led to an intimacy between two persons diametrically opposed to each other in habits and in cha racter. On his return from Paris Dumont formed that con nection with Jeremy Bentham which exercised a powerful influence over his future opinions, and, as it were, fixed his career as a writer on legislation. Filled with admiration for the genius of Bentham, and profoundly impressed with the truth of his theory, and the important consequences to which it immediately led, Dumont made it one of the chief objects of his life to recast and edit the writings of the great English jurist in a form suitable for the ordinary reading public. This literary relationship was, according to Dumont s own account, one of a somewhat peculiar character. All the fundamental ideas and most of the illustrative material were supplied in the manuscripts of Bentham ; Dumont s task was chiefly to abridge by striking out repeated matter, to supply lacunae, to secure uniformity of style, and to improve the French. The following works of Bentham were published under the editorship of Dumont : Traite de la Legislation (1802), Theorie des peines et des Recompenses (1811), Tactique des Assemblies legislatives (1815), Preuves Judiciaires (1823), and Organization Judiciaire et Codification (1828). In the summer of 1789, that season of promise and of hope, especially to a Genevese exile, Dumont suspended his labours in England in order to proceed to Paris along with his friend Duroverai, ex-attorney-general of the republic of Geneva. The object of the journey was to obtain through Necker, who had just returned to office, an unrestricted restoration of Genevese liberty, by cancel ling the treaty of guarantee between France and Switzer land, which prevented the republic from enacting new laws without the consent of the parties to this treaty. The proceedings and negotiations to which this mission gave rise necessarily brought Dumont into connection with most of the leading men in the Constituent Assembly, and made him an interested spectator, sometimes even a participator, indirectly, in the events of the French Revolution. 