Raymond Birn
The Profits of Ideas: Privilèges en librairie
in Eighteenth-Century France
Eighteenth-Century Studies, 4
(2),
Winter,
1970-1971, 131-168
Index
HHC: Titling and Index added
ON 30 AUGUST
1777 - fifteen months after the fall of Turgot and three months into Necker’s first ministry - six royal arrêts overturned the fundamental commercial principles upon which the French book trade
had rested for a century. The first four
of these orders suppressed certain provincial communities of sellers and
printers, the so-called chambres syndicales, while creating others;
revised criteria for accepting master libraires
and imprimeurs; established two public sales annually for the disposition of literary
property; and ruled on the conduct and discipline of the journeyman
printers. [1] The
Sixth arrêt, recognizing how a clique of
favored publishers had monopolized the industry by extending over many
generations exclusive rights of reproduction, the privileges en librairie, thus
reducing less favored colleagues to the recourse of counterfeit editions, now
legitimized these editions, provided that owners presented their volumes to a
royal inspector or official of the community to be stamped. [2]
But the Fifth arrêt of 30 August was the most significant of
all. For the first time
legislation distinguished between the nature of literary property in the hands
of an author and in the hands of a publisher.
The privilege, granted to the writer
for his labor or to the publisher for his
investment, was newly defined. The arrêt stated that hereafter no first edition
could be published in France without either a royal privilege or permission
awarded by the keeper of the seals.
Previous legislation had required
this of all titles, classics as well as new books.
I wish to express my gratitude to the
Fulbright Commission for its financial support in 1968-69, when I conducted the
research for this article. A shorter and
somewhat different version was read at the annual meeting of the Society for
French Historical Studies, held in Washington, D.C. on 20 March 1970.
1. Bibliothêque
Nationale. Fonds Francais 22180, Nrs. 81, 82, 87, 91. 30 August 1777. See also Isambert, Jourdan, and Decrusy eds., Receuil
general des anciennes lois franfaises (Paris, 1922-30), XXIII, 108-28.
2. F. Fr. 22180, Nr. 84. 30 August 1777.
131
Yet
what was most original about the new ruling was the distinction it made between a privilege possessed by authors or their
heirs on the one hand,
and publishers on the other. When owned
by the first group, the nature
of the privilege was perpetual as well as exclusive. Retaining it, the writer and his descendants might negotiate freely
with a printer and participate
in any way deemed desirable and through as many editions as
were necessary to effect the distribution and sale of the book in question.
All other parties were restrained from publishing the work. However, once a publisher purchased the
manuscript from its author and assumed responsibility for the edition himself,
the royal privilege accompanying the
transfer would be valid for a minimum of ten years or the lifetime of
the work’s author. As soon as the
publisher’s privilege expired, the work would enter the public domain. A publisher might renew his privilege only if
he had the text of his edition increased by
at least one-fourth. It was assumed that
“anciennes éditions non-augmentées”
would fall into the public domain whether or not an old privilège
protected them. All publishers were
commanded to declare an inventory of privilèges en librairie in their
possession so that new determinations on the limits of their validity could be
made. The spirit of the ruling was
expressed in language intended to assuage publishers for a sudden loss of
property which they held to be as real as a piece of land or a marriageable
daughter: “Sa Majesté a
pensé qu’un Règlement qui restreindroit le droit exclusif des
Libraires au temps qui sera porté
dans le Privilège seroit leur avantage, parce qu’une jouissance limitée, mais certaine, est préférable
a une jouissance indéfinie, mais illusoire.” [3]
The difficulty was that few holders of privileges en
librairie in 1777 - or for the past century
for that matter - considered their possessions to be illusions. They were
based, it was believed, upon sound theory and concrete example. Colbert had established the precedent early
in the reign of Louis XIV, when, to maintain economic and ideological controls over the librairie, he linked a policy on
privileges to two other aspects of his program, censorship, and the
limitation and careful surveillance of presses in France.
Authority
over censorship, of course, he inherited from predecessors. [4] When
he established a royal board of examiners for theological
3 F.
Fr. 22180, Nr. 80. 30 August 1777. Amendments. F. Fr. 22180, Nr. 175. 30 July 1778.
4. No comprehensive study of censorship under the Ancien Régime exists. Aspects of the problem have been studied, however, either as specialized monographs or as a part of more general works on the book trade and its administration. In the former category are J.-P. Belin, Le Commerce des livres prohibés à Paris de 1750 et 1789 (Paris, 1913); Albert [Bachman, Censorship in France from 1715-1750: Voltaire’s Opposition (New York, 1934); and Nicole Herrmann-Mascard, La Censure des livres à Paris à la fin de l’Ancien Regimé (1750-1789) (Paris, 1968). In the latter are Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, L’ Apparition du livre (Paris, 1958), pp. 371-75 ; David T. Pottinger, The French Book Trade in the Ancien Régime, 1500-1791 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 54-81; Madeleine Ventre, L’Imprimerie et la librairie en Languedoc au dernier siècle de l’Ancien Régime (1700-1789) (Paris and The Hague, 1958), pp. 75-215; Pierre Grosclaude, Malesherbes: témoin et interprète de son temps (Paris, 1961), pp. 63-208, 665-82; and Henri-Jean Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle (1598-1701) (Geneva, 1969) I, 440-71; II, 695-98, 764-74.]
HHC: [bracketed] displayed on page 133 of original
132
works,
But a far more serious element in the Colbertian
program, since for many it meant
disappearance altogether, was the policy of limiting the number of presses in
5. F. Fr. 22071, Nr. 108. 11 September 1665. As may be expected, preventive and repressive censorship was a constant
preoccupation of the Crown from the reign of Louis XIV until the revolution, and literally hundreds
of royal arrêts were promulgated on the subject. Two comprehensive
rulings attempted to coalesce the specific legislation
of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The first was issued in 1686 (F. Fr. 22061,
Nr. 121. “Edit du Roy pour le règlement des imprimeurs
et libraires de Paris, avec les autoritez
des anciennes ordonnances, statuts, arrests & règlements”
133
but
also in Lyon,
Something
went wrong, however. The censorship
controls broke down. Too many French
readers desired books printed in the freer climes
of
6. Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, I, 319-26; II, 678-83, 699, 704. The crisis of recession which
helps to explain Colbert’s retrenchment policies from the economic angle has
been a
fruitful topic for revisionist historians rightly wishing to deglamorize the
Sun King’s reign. Roland Mousnier
brilliantly analyzed the background of the crise and the royal response
in Les XVIe et XVIIe siècles (“Histoire
générale des civilisations”), IV (
7. Paul Chauvet, Les Ouvriers
du livre en
8. Martin, Livre,
pouvoirs et société,
II, 739-53.
134
publishing
centers for books for French consumption in
As it stood, Colbert’s privilege system conspired with
the policy of reducing the number of presses to create,
by the beginning of the eighteenth century,
a book trade thoroughly dominated by a handful of Paris
libraires-imprimeurs, who dictated contracts with authors while rendering
colleagues in the capital and provinces submissive and economically
impotent. These favored publishers,
customarily the officers of the Paris Community
of Sellers and Printers, formed a patriciate closely associated with the
regime - registering privilèges and permits, as imprimeurs du Roi dividing
monopolies over the publication of government documents, and, above all,
obtaining exclusive privileges for as many books as possible, old titles and
new ones, classics, and best sellers. [11]
9. C.-G. Lamoignon de
Malesherbes, Mémoires sur la librairie et sur la
liberté de la presse (
10.
F. Fr. 21990.
11. As the foremost economic
consideration of French publishers of the Ancien Regimé, the privilège en librairie
has not escaped the attention of scholars.
During the second half of the
nineteenth century the historiography of the privilèges was marred by the fact that
those who approached the subject did so to justify personal positions in the
then current debate over perpetual
copyright. For example, Edouard
Laboulaye and Georges [Guiffrey defended
the principle of perpetual copyright by stressing the need for reestablishing
continuity with tradition - that is, with their interpretation of pre-1777
tradition. They stressed the principle
that under the Ancien Régime an author and his heirs might retain a privilege
ad infinitum, and that, until 1777, publishers justifiably might expect
identical protection. By employing
historical precedent to defend the ambitions
of publishers of their own day, however, Laboulaye and Guiffrey neglected to mention
that before 1777 the author and his heirs were prohibited from exploiting the privilège.
Only a libraire or imprimeur could engage in the commerce of books, and
the Paris Community of Sellers and Printers urged members of the guild
to insist upon an author’s surrender of his privilège
before undertaking publication of his manuscript. In the overwhelming number of cases
this intra-community collusion seems to have worked,
and it was not until 1769 that an author overtly challenged publishers’
practice by finding a printer who would undertake his work without
insisting upon purchase of the privilège as
well, and then locating several libraires who would distribute and sell
it. Though the logic of Laboulaye and
Guiffrey was shaky, the documents reprinted in their volume, La Propriété littéraire au XVIIIe
siècle. Recueil de pièces et de documents. Publié par le Comite de l’Association pour la défense
de la propriété littéraire et artistique (
HHC: [bracketed] displayed on page 136 of original
135
The earliest privilèges en librairie dated back to the first decades of the sixteenth century and were granted either to authors
or publishers. The original intent was
to allow the principal investor in an edition the opportunity
to recover his money and earn a profit within a fixed period of time - five to
ten years customarily. After this period
the
136
book
in question was to become free copy. The
University, Parlement of Paris, Court of Châtelet,
and king shared in the issuance of privilèges. In the second
half of the sixteenth century, however, the Crown assumed
exclusive authority to award them. The
wars of religion activated the press as never
before, and royal advisors sought to convert a commercial favor of the
king’s into a means of censorship control.
In 1566 royal privileges for all first editions became obligatory.
Enforcing such an ordinance outside
137
publishers. The issues at
hand would involve the exclusive privilèges for popular editions of classical texts, automatic
renewals of privileges, and the privilèges généraux.
When
Louis XIV assumed control of the government in 1661, however, no settled
privilege policy, governed by royal ordinance, existed. A General Ruling on the
librairie in 1649 had recognized the principle of exclusive privileges for
classics, but Parlement refused to register that part of the
document. Chancellor Séguier abided by
it nevertheless and awarded privileges and
renewals to the
12 Martin, Livre,pouvoirs et société, I, 51-57, 331-61, 423-29,
440-60; II, 555-96, 678-95. The essential documents on the evolution of the privilège system
from the sixteenth through mid-seventeenth
centuries are as follows: Chevillier, L’Origine de l’imprimerie de Paris (Paris, 1695), p. 395 - an enumeration of the first privileges;
Isambert, Jourdan, and Decrusy, Recueil
général, XIV, 210-11 - the Edict of Moulin (February 1566) obliging royal privilèges for all first editions; F. Fr.
22071, Nr. 69. 19 July 1618. Art. XXXIII - the article in the royal patent
letters establishing the Paris Community of Sellers and Printers, which
prohibited renewals of privilèges without
a corresponding augmentation of the text;
F. Fr. 22061, Nr. 93. December 1649.
Art. XXVI - the controversial article in the General Ruling over the librairie which recognized
exclusive privileges for classics; F. Fr. 22071, Nr. 107. 27 February 1665 - the last royal arrêt until the
mid-eighteenth century that made any genuine attempt to slow down the
contraction of the public domain.
13. Charles Jourdain, Histoire de l’Universite de
Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIe siècles (
138
d’Andilly and Louis of
Granada, for “des offices de l’Église, de la Messe & de la Semaine sainte
en Latin & en Francois, que pour le Vieux et du Nouveau Testament,” [14]
for certain translations of the Books of Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes,
and, finally, for the translated writings of
St. John Chrysostom and Gregory the Great. [15]
Such
a policy presaged disaster for publishers in the country, accustomed to assume
that translated classics and patristic texts belonged to the public domain, and
all that was needed, in order to make an
edition of one of them, was censorship approval from a local procureur du Roi.
In the last years of the
seventeenth century, Lyon and
14.
Most likely this-was Nicolas Fontaine’s Histoire du Vieux & Nouveau
Testament (
15.
F. Fr. 22074, Nr. 37. 3 August 1675.
16. F. Fr. 22061, Nr. 121.
Art. LXVI. See Roubert, “La Situation de l’imprimerie lyonnaise,” pp. 86-87.
17. F. Fr. 22074, Nr. 66. 30 August 1692. F. Fr.
22074, Nr. 68. [1694]. F. Fr. 22074, Nr. 70. 20 June
1699. The second seizure, instigated at
the request of André Pralard of
18.
F. Fr. 22071, Nr. 195. 2 October 1701.
139
published books,
these surely would be denied; for Parisians, gaining wind of their intentions, would get to the
Administration first and acquire exclusive privilèges for the works in
question. Every day, complained the
Between 1704
and 1725, the non-privileged publishers of
One
of the most publicized cases involved two members of the patriciate,
Jean-Baptiste II Coignard and Jacques Mariette.
It had become fairly common for the
chancellor’s office to tempt a Parisian with privilège prolongations for works
that sold well if only the
19. F. Fr. 22071,
Nr. 196. “A nosseigneurs des Requestes de l’Hôtel”[1702].
20 F. Fr. 22065, Nr. 63.
21 July 1704.
21.
F. Fr. 22071, Nr. 223. 30 January 1706.
22. Mellottee, Histoire economique, I, 196-99.
23. Chauvet, Les Ouvriers du
livre, pp. 150-55. The General
Ruling of 1723 officially authorized use
of the alloués.
140
publisher
would undertake the re-edition of a costly venture whose profit was not guaranteed. In 1707, such an opportunity was presented to
Coignard, imprimeur du Roi et de l’Académie
francaise. Six years earlier Coignard had obtained a twelve-year
privilege for several works,
including the immensely successful Dictionnaire of Moréri. In hopes of publishing a new edition of the Moréri,
Coignard decided to share the priviège for it with Mariette. Nothing immediate came of the partnership.
But then the chancellor’s office proposed an eighteen-year
continuation of the priviège for the Moréri
provided that Coignard undertake publication of the out of print Antiquitates
Constantinopolitana of Père Anselme.
Coignard proceeded to inform Mariette
that by virtue of the partnership in the Moréri, the two were to share
expenses for the Anselme. Mariette did
not see it that way, maintaining that the
two enterprises were wholly independent of each other. He invoked a long abused
arrêt of 1665 stating the necessity of considerable augmentations of
text before a priviège prolongation would be granted, and added that both he
and Coignard possessed sufficient new material to merit a legitimate
continuation of the Moréri. But greed alone had motivated Coignard,
Mariette wrote, since the imprimeur du Roi failed to mention that in addition
to the Moréri, he had managed to
wangle fifty additional prolongations of privièges in his possession - if only he would undertake
the Anselme. [24] In the long run Mariette
obtained satisfaction. I can find no subsequent
re-edition of the Anselme, and in 1712 a new edition of Moréri
appeared with Mariette cited as publisher. [25] According to one source, admittedly
exaggerated, the profits accruing from it were enormous, if not
exorbitant. [26]
Eight
years later, however, a grave crisis struck the
necessaires pour ses Classes, avec des Notes ou sans Notes, &
specialement une suite d’Auteurs Grecs & Latins,
avec des Notes & des Index... [to be printed]
autant de fois que leur bon semblera & de les faire vendre &
24. The memoir of Coignard is F. Fr. 22072, Nr.
14. [1710] “Au Roy & a nosseigneurs de son Conseil.” The memoir of Mariette is F. Fr. 22072, Nr.
16. [1710] “Au
25. Catalogue générales des livres imprimes de
la Bibliothèque Nationale. Vol. 119, 529-30.
26. [Jacques-Pierre Blondel], “Mémoire sur les vexations qu’exercent les libraires & les imprimeurs de Paris” (Paris [1725]), p. 4.
141
débiter par tout notre Royaume pendant le temps de cinquante
années consécutives.
Though
the award categorically denied prejudice against publishers holding privileges for editions contemplated by
the University, it nevertheless prohibited libraires and imprimeurs of the
capital from printing the same works that the Sorbonne
might undertake. The rector looked for a
publisher with whom he might entrust the vast concession. He did not have to go far. His brother, Lambert Coffin, had
recently resigned his professorship to take up a new profession - that of libraire. [28] The issue bore the earmarks of a
put-up job, and the Parisians found
themselves duped at a game in which they themselves had acquired great
skill. They cried that the grant to the
University was a privilèges général, now out of fashion, [29] and that the
advancement of scholarship would all but cease. Editors, they claimed, would be willing to
undertake only University-sponsored ventures.
Conveniently forgetting their own relentless hunt for privilèges, the Parisians added that the free market in classical
texts and indexes was now ruined, and
compounding self-interest with hypocrisy, the patriciate suddenly
displayed concern for brethren in the country, “dont la plupart ne subsistent
que pour l’Impression & le Débit des Feuilles de Classes & des livres à
l’usage des Etudians.”
Once the provincial universities
imitated
Important
as this affair was in itself, it also must be seen as an effort on the part of the University to regain a degree
of influence over an area in which
it once had played such a preponderant role.
Prior to printing, the
librairie had been within the domain of its authority. In the sixteenth century, however, its
controls over censorship had whittled away,
and in the seventeenth century its position on the free trade in books had become a dead letter. In the view of the doctors, a
27.
F. Fr. 22072, Nr. 33. 8 August 1720.
28. F. Fr. 22072, Nr. 34. [1720]
“Memoire pour le sieur Lambert Coffin, ancien professeur en Universite.” Lambert Coffin had to pay dearly for his
windfall. His former colleagues deeply resented his commercial
ambitions, maintaining that the profession of libraire, at one time
linked closely to the academy, “n’est pas aujourd’hui sur l’ancien pied… &
que comme elle n’a rien d’incompatible avec l’Art d’un Relieur, elle n’a aussi rien de compatible avec la Profession noble &
libérale de Maistre de l’Université.”
The binders, incidentally, had been driven out of the community
in 1686.
29. Late in the seventeenth century authors had been
prohibited from obtaining privilèges
généraux. F. Fr. 22071,
Nr. 136. 18 February 1673; F. Fr. 22071, Nr. 138. 4 June 1674; F. Fr. 22173, Nr. 46. 13 May 1686. I can find nothing in the registers, however,
that prohibited publishers from obtaining them.
30. F. Fr. 22072, Nr. 35.
“Mémoire pour les libraires & imprimeurs de
142
once
noble profession had fallen prey to the state and crafty businessmen.
[31] Worst of all, in 1703 a royal order
opened the academic community itself to all master libraires and imprimeurs,
not merely the two dozen favored ones
sanctioned by medieval tradition. [32] After all the humiliations
perhaps now the opportunity arose for a bit of vengeance, and Rector Coffin
decided to make the most of circumstances.
But
the Parisians were too firmly entrenched.
They launched a counter-attack against the university, and in 1721 the
officers of the chambre syndicale obtained
major concessions from the Royal Council. Most significant was the fact that the
volumes which the university intended to
undertake were not to be protected by a privilège after all. They rather would obtain special permissions
simples. This meant that commercial
publishers would be allowed to print subsequent versions of the university
editions as freely as they wished. They
merely would have to acquire their own permissions. Only published lecture notes would keep their
exclusive character. [33]
The Parisians thus could
breathe more easily, but at the price of principle. For
a moment they had to reverse their position on privilèges and were forced
to acknowledge additions to the public domain.
The storm passed, and they soon returned to customary habits of
obtaining privilèges and protecting
them. The Sorbonne affair of 1720-21 was
to be considered an anomaly. They might
renew their course again.
Indeed,
they had to. The sudden aggressiveness
of the Sorbonne perhaps was symptomatic of
the deep social and economic crisis which arose in
31. Jourdain, Histoire de
l’Université, II, 28-29, 176-78. Olivier-Martin, L’Organisation
corporative,
pp. 55-60.
32. F. Fr. 21748, Nr. 62. 6
October 1703. Formerly, membership had
been restricted to twenty-four masters, a
custom dating back to the fourteenth century.
In 1725 the University saved some
face by obtaining the right to examine all candidates for masterships in
the book trade, ostensibly to determine literacy in Latin and Greek. Obviously the examination was nothing more
than a formal gesture.
33. F. Fr. 22072, Nr. 38. 13 September 1721.
143
ignored
altogether. In 1744 the “Reglement du Conseil”
became known as the “code de la librairie” and was
applied formally to the entire kingdom. [34] Though the revisions of 1777 were to
alter completely its treatment of the privilèges, it remained the fundamental document governing the book trade for the
remainder of the Ancien Régime. [35]
Divided into sixteen chapters and 123 articles, the
ruling covered the administration and
composition of the community, censorship procedures, the policing of published
works, the rights of authors, the role of itinerant peddlers (the colporteurs),
the auxiliary trades, and finally the
privilèges and permits. Curiously
enough, the ruling failed to define privilèges per se, or state criteria for their prolongation. But Article 103 assumed that all books
printed in
The
patriciate countered provincial protests against the ruling by having drawn up in 1725 a theoretical argument
justifying the legislation. No longer did the Parisians intend to depend
solely upon historical precedent or
economic necessity, as had been traditional with them. Nor
would they pay much attention to the contradictory elements in seventeenth
century arrêst on the privilèges. T hey would appeal rather to a fundamental idea on property which had its
source, so they believed, in Natural Rights themselves. They called upon a parlementary lawyer, Louis d’Héricourt, to prepare their
brief, which they submitted to Keeper of the Seals Fleuriau
d’Armenonville early in 1726. [36]
34. F. Fr. 22062, Nr. 85. 24
March 1744. Saugrain, Code de la librairie et de
l’imprimerie (
35. Isambert, Jourdan, Decrusy, Recueil général, XXI,
216-31.
36. By no means was d’Héricourt’s argument wholly
original. As early as 1694, a memoir of
the
144
To
their bewilderment d’Armenonville became furious when he read it. He forced
the resignations of the syndic and adjunct of the community, and the printer of the Mérnoire had
to flee
What was so outrageous about the argument which now
threatened the alliance molded by Colbert half a
century earlier? Essentially, d’Héricourt and the Parisians defined the royal
privilege in so restrictive a way
that it became no more than the confirmation of an anterior right - and
that right was property: “Il est certain,” wrote the jurist, “selon les
principes que l’on vient d’établir, que ce ne soot point les Privilèges que le Roi accorde aux Libraires qui
les rendent proprietaires des Ouvrages qu’ils impriment, mais uniquement
l’acquisition du Manuscrit, dont l’auteur
leur transmet la propriété, au moyen du prix qu’il en recoit.” By what right is a manuscript the property of
an author, d’Héricourt asked rhetorically?
His reply was an extension of Locke’s : “C’est le fruit d’un travail qui lui est
personnel, dont it doit avoir la liberté de disposer à son gré, pour se
procurer, outre l’honneur qu’il en espère, un profit qui lui fournisse ses
besoins.” Of course, d’Héricourt
neglected to mention that the Ruling of 1723 prohibited
all who were neither libraires nor imprimeurs from engaging in the
commerce of books, so that authors had no other choice than to transfer
ownership of the product of their toil.
To d’Héricourt, once the manuscript
changed hands, the new owner obtained full and outright possession: “[Il] doit demeurer perpétuellement propriétaire du Texte de cet Ouvrage, lui & ses descendans,
comme d’une terre ou d’une maison qu’il auroit acquise, parce que
l’acquisition d’un héritage ne differe en rien par la nature de l’acquisition
de celle d’un manuscrit.” Therefore, a
privilège, strictly speaking, could have no temporal
limits. It simply acknowledged a right
of property. “Le Roi, n’ayant
aucun droit sur les Ouvrages des Auteurs, ne peut les transmettre à personne sans le consentement de ceux qui s’en trouvent les légitimes propriétaires.” Once a manuscript passed censorship and
the publishers acquired a royal privilège over it, the king “se trouve dans une
heureuse impuissance d’ôer les Privilèges qu’il a
37. F. Fr. 22072, Nr. 62. “A
Monseigneur le Garde des Sceaux” (
Ce mémoire a
tellement irrité le Garde des Sceaux qu’il en insulta le sindic Mariette &
son confrère adjoint Ganeau, qu’ils luy
donnèrent leur démission, & à leur place furent nommés par arrest du
Conseil Brunet sindic, Prudhomme & Saugrain adjoints.
In 1764 the librairie official
Francois Marin noted that the printer of the memoir, Vincent, had had to flee Paris (F. Fr. 22183. March, 1764).
145
accordés
a un libraire propriétaire d’un Manuscrit, pour en gratifier un autre qui n’y a
aucun droit.” [38]
Franklin
Ford has noted how early eighteenth century Robe theoreticians adapted to French circumstances certain of the justifying
principles for the Glorious Revolution.
Customarily it was the contractual theory of the state that intrigued
them. [39] D’Héricourt,
however, was dipping into two other areas
dear to the men of 1688, the labor
theory of property and the inviolability of commercial contracts. The merging of these concepts would
serve the self-interest of the privilège monopolists of the French book trade
for another half century. Nevertheless,
the year 1726 marks a watershed in another way.
No longer would the Administration react with automatic sympathy to the
wishes of the
Still,
between 1726 and 1750, the regime made no concerted effort to revise the
privilège system. Only once between
these dates did it seem genuinely threatened.
This was in 1739. Two
38. F. Fr. 22072, Nr. 62. The memoir was reprinted, with slight
variants, in the Oeuvres posthumes de Maitre Louis d’Héricourt, Avocat au
Parlement (
39.
Franklin L. Ford, Robe and Sword: The
Regrouping of the French Aristocracy After Louis XIV (New York, 1965), p. 224. See also Denis Richet, “Autour des Origines idéologiques lointaines de la Revolution francaise. Elites et despotismes,” Annales.
Economies, Societes, Civilisations (1969),
1-23.
40. [Blondel], “Mémoire sur les vexations.”
In his Journal et mémoires sur la
Régence et sur le regne de Louis XV, ed. de Lescure (Paris, 1863-68), III, 176 and 310, Matthieu
Marais notes that Blondel’s memoir was thought to have been the work of
disgruntled journeyman printers. The memoir has been edited by Lucien Faucou
and published under its original title by the Moniteur
du Bibliophile (
146
d’Héricourt’s argument that p