BARBEYRAC, Jean, an able writer on the principles of natural law, was the nephew of Charles Barbeyrac, a distinguished physician of Montpellier, and was born at Béziers in Lower Languedoc, in 1674. He removed, along w ith his family, into Switzerland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and there studied jurisprudence. After spending some time at Geneva and Frankfυrt-on-theMain, he became professor of belles lettres in the French school of Berlin. Thence, in 1711, he was called to the professorship of history and civil law at Lausanne, and finally settled as professor of public law at Groningen. He died in 1744. His first published work of any extent was the curious Traité du Jeu, 1709, in which he defends the morality of games of chance. His fame rests chiefly on the preface and notes to his translation of Puffendorf’s celebrated treatise De Jure Naturoe et Gentium. In fundamental principles he follows almost entirely Locke and Puffendorf; but he works out with great skill the theory of moral obligation, referring it to the command or will of God He indicates the distinction, developed more fully by Thomasius and Kant, between the legal and the moral qualities of action The principles of international law he reduces to those of the law of nature, and combats, in so doing, many of the positions taken up by Grotius. He rejects the notion that sovereignty in any way resembles property, and makes even marriage a matter of civil con tract. Barbeyrac also translated Grotius’s De Jure Belli ct Pacis, Cumberland’s De Legibus Naturae, and Puffendorf’s smaller treatise on obligations. Among his own productions are a treatise, De la Morale des Pères, and a history of ancient treaties, contained in the Supplément au grand corps diplomatique.