, a very active agent in the French revolution, and a victim to
, a very
active agent in the French revolution, and a victim to the
tyranny he had created, was the son of the master of an
eating-house, and boru in 1754 at Chartres in the Orleanuois. After receiving a good education, he was intended
for the bar, but having served a clerkship for five years,
he relinquished the further prosecution of the law, in order to study literature and the sciences; and an accidental
acquaintance with some Englishmen, and the perusal of
some English books, seem to have confirmed this determination. About this time he changed the appellation of
“de Otiarville
” to that of Warville, agreeable to the English pronunciation. Having by relinquishing the law incurred his father’s displeasure, he was indebted to the
bounty of some friends, who enabled him to prosecute his
studies at Paris for two years; after which he became editor of the “Courier de PEurope,
” a paper printed at Boulogne; but this being discontinued on account of some articles inimical to government, he returned to Paris, and in
imitation of Voltaire, Diderot, and D'Alembert, who, as
he imagined, had destroyed religious tyranny, began to
attempt the destruction of political tyranny, which he fancied was reserved for his irresistible pen. To develope the
whole of his plan, however, was not his aim at first: and
he began, therefore, with attacking such abuses as might
have been removed without any injury to an established constitution, but which, as they could not be wholly denied, he
endeavoured to trace from the very nature of monarchy.
With this view he published some works on criminal jurisprudence, as, in 1780, his “Theory of Criminal laws,
” 2
vols. 8vo, and two papers arising out of the subject, which
gained the prize in 1782, at the academy of Chalons-surMarne. He also began a work which was afterwards completed in 10 vols. 8vo, <c A philosophical library of the
criminal law,“and a volume concerning
” Truth“and
” Thoughts on the means of attaining Truth in all the
branches of human knowledge," which he intended merely as an introduction to a work on a more enlarged and
comprehensive plan. To all these he annexed ideas of singular importance and utility, although his notions are
crude, and his knowledge superficial.