Mare, Nicolas De La

, was a principal magistrate of the Chatelet under Louis XIV. who reposed great confidence in him, and gave him a considerable pension. He was employed in several important affairs, particularly during the scarcity of corn in 1693, 1700, 1709, and 1710. He received a free gift of 300,000 livres, arising from the ninth part of the increased prices of admission to the public amusements, exhibited at the Hotel Dieu in Paris; but this sum did not increase his fortune, for he liberally employed it all in the expences attendant on the gratuitous functions of his office, the commissions with which he was entrusted, and the completion of his great work. He died April 15, 1723, aged near 82. This worthy magistrate established his fame by a most laborious treatise on the police, in 3 vols. folio, to which another author, M. le Clerc du Brillet, has since added a fourth. They contain a history of the French police, the privileges of the magistrates, the laws on that subject, &c. The two first volumes had supplements, which, in the edition of 1722, were thrown into the body of the work. The third volume was printed in 1719, and the fourth in 1738, and not reprinted. There is a valuable plate of the water-conduits of Paris, which is wanting in some copies. ²