DUPIN, André Marie Jean Jacques (1783-1865), commonly called Dupin the Elder, a celebrated French advocate, president of the Chamber of Deputies and of the Legislative Assembly, was born at Varzy, in Nièvre, on the 1st February 1783. He was educated by his father, who was a lawyer of eminence, and at an early age he became principal clerk of an attorney at Paris. On the establishment of the Academie de Legislation he entered it as pupil from Nièvre. In 1800 he was made advocate, and in 1802, when the schools of law were opened, he received successively the degrees of licentiate and doctor from the new faculty. He was in 1810 an unsuccessful candidate for the chair of law at Paris, and in 1811 he also failed to obtain the office of advocate-general at the court of cassation. About this time he was added to the commission charged with the classification of the laws of the empire, and, after the interruption caused by the events of 1814 and 1815, was charged with the sole care of that great work. When he entered the Chamber of Deputies in 1815 he at once took an active part in the debates, and strenuously opposed the election of the son of Napoleon as emperor after his father’s abdication. At the election after the second restoration Dupin was not re-elected. He defended with great intrepidity the principal political victims of the reaction, among others, in conjunction with Berryer, Marshal Ney; and in October 1815 boldly published a tractate entitled Libre Défense des Accuses. In 1827 he was again elected a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and in 1830 took part in counselling the revolution, and in exhorting the citizens to resistance. In August of that year he became a member of Louis Philippe’s cabinet, and more than any one else contributed to the formation ...of the new régime. At the end of 1832 he became president of the chamber, which office he held succesively for eight years. On Louis Philippe’s abdication in 1848 Dupin introduced the young count of Paris into the chamber, and proposed him as king with the duchess of Orleans as regent. This attempt failed, but Dupin submitted to circumstances, and, retaining the office of procureur-général, his first act was to decide that justice should henceforth be rendered to the “name of the French people.” In 1849 he was elected a member of the Assembly, and became president of the principal committee—that on legislation. After the coup d'etat of 2d December 1851 he still retained his office of procureur-général, and did not demit it till effect was given to the decrees confiscating the property of the house of Orleans. In 1857 he was offered his old office by the emperor, and accepted it, explaining his acceptance in a discourse, a sentence of which may be employed to describe his whole political career. “I have always,” he said, “belonged to France and never to parties.” He died 8th November 1865. Among Dupin’s works, which are numerous, may be mentioned Principia Juns Civilis, 5 vols. (1806); Mémoires et plaidoyers de 1806 au I er Janvier 1830, in 20 vols.; and Mémoires ou souvenirs du barreau, in 4 vols. 1855-57.
DUPIN, Louis Ellies (1657-1719), a celebrated French ecclesiastical historian, belonged to a noble family in Normandy, and was born at Paris on the 17th June 1657. He received his early education from his father, and had scarcely reached his tenth year when he entered the college of Harcourt, where he graduated as M.A. in 1672. Detennining to adopt the ecclesiastical profession, he became a pupil of the Sorbonne, and received the degre of B.D. in 1680, and that of D.D. in 1684. About this time he conceived the idea of a Bibliotheque Universelle de tous les Auteurs Ecclesiastiques, the first volume of which appeared in 1686. The liberty with which he there treated the doctrines of the fathers aroused ecclesiastical prejudice, and the archbishop of Paris condemned the work. Dupin consented to a retractation, but it was suppressed in 1693; he was, however, allowed again to continue it on changing its title, to the extent of substituting Houvelleior Universelle. He was subsequently exiled to Châtellerault as a Jansenist, but the sentence of banishment was repealed on a new retractation. In 1718 he entered into a correspondence with Wake, archbishop of Canterbury, with a view to a union of the English and Gallican churches; and, being suspected of projecting a change in the dogmas of the church, his papers were seized in 1719, but nothing was found that could be properly framed into an accusation against him. The same zeal for union is said to have induced Yim, during the residence of Peter the Great in France, and Lt that monarch’s request, to draw up a plan for uniting the Greek and Roman churches. He died at Paris on the Gth June 1719.
Dupin was a voluminous author. Besides his great work on L·cclesiastical authors, mention may be made of Bibliothèque Universelle des Historiens, 2 vols. (1707); L’Histoire de l' Église en abrégé (1712); and L’Histoire Profane depuis le commencement du Monde jusqu’ à present, 4 vols. 1712.
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