His first works, Theorie des lois criminelles (1781) and Bibliotheque philosophique du legislateur (1782), were on the philosophy of law, and showed how thoroughly Brissot was imbued with the ethical precepts of Rousseau.
His Theorie des lois civiles (London, 1767) is a vigorous defence of absolutism and attack on the politics of Montesquieu.
The effect of pardon, whether actual or constructive, is to put the person pardoned in the position of an innocent man, so that he may have 1 See further, on the ethical aspect, Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, bk.
It was nevertheless proscribed in the next year at the instance of the Montagnard deputy Albitte, for an anti-anarchical hemistich (Des lois et non du sang!); Fenelon (1793) was suspended after a few representations; and in 1794 his Timoleon, set to Etienne Mehul's music, was also proscribed.
What is thus suggested is not a rash departure from the general point of view of idealism (by its achievements in every field to which it has been applied, " stat mole sua ") but a cautious inquiry into the possibility of reaching a conception of the world ' The most striking statement of this argument is to be found in Boutroux's treatise De la contingence des lois de la nature, first published in 1874 and reprinted without alteration in 1905.
