Principes Politiques sur le rappel des Protestans en France, by…

Same Year as the First Edition. Two parts in one volume, 12mo, (160 x 90 mm), pp. [iv], 163, iv (épitre dédicatoire à Madame la *** misbound before p. 163); [iv], 144, with the half-titles, title-pages printed in red and black with the same engraved title vignette on each volume, text a little dampstained, particularly title-pages, binding slightly sprung between the volumes, in contemporary speckled calf, double filet gilt to covers, spine ruled in gilt with olive green morocco label lettered in gilt, paper shelf mark label at the foot of the spine, with the later Leipziger Stadtbibliothek bookplate and library stamps of Leipzig University and Bibliothek von Schloss Püchau, crossed through, from the library of Claude Lebédel.

An important plea for religious tolerance based on the study of demographics and the writings of Malthus. Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and the persecution of protestants, the mass exodus of some 8% of the population had far-reaching consequences. About 100,000 French people left the country, exporting about 60 million livres, which had crippled French commerce, at the same time as augmenting foreign economies and armies. Turmeau de la Morandière stresses the cumulative dangers arising from this depopulation and concludes that the revocation itself was ‘trop étendu, trop sévère, trop précipité dans certaines de ses dispositions’, that it led to hardship in France and prosperity in England, Germany and Holland (I., 157). He argues that the only remedy for France is to adopt a policy of religious tolerance and to allow the protestants to return to France. His reasoning is economic more than humanitarian and is based principally on an an assumed link between increase in population and economic prosperity.
Turmeau de la Morandière is also credited with a rare treatise on the prostitutes of Paris, Réprésentations à Monsieur le lieutenant général de police de Paris [Antoine de Sartine] Sur les courtisanes à la mode & les demoiselles du bon ton, Paris, ‘Impr. d’une Société de gens ruinés par les femmes’, 1760. His focus in this treatise is with the demographic problems of begging, homelessness and prostitution in France. His other works include Police sur les mendians, les vagabonds, les joueurs de profession, les intrigans, les filles prostituées, les domestiques hors de maison depuis long-tems, & les gens sans aveu, Paris, Dessain Junior, 1764 and Appel des étrangers dans nos colonies, Paris 1763 (reprinted 1973).
The first edition was published in Paris by Valleyre in the same year. To begin with it was published anonymously but the author’s name was added at some point in the printing process and copies exist with the author’s name in the either or both volumes. This Amsterdam edition is anonymous in both parts. Cioranescu lists only a later edition of 1768.

See Cioranescu 62546 (1768 edition only); Quérard IX, 580; INED 4633.