DUPONT DE NEMOURS, Pierre Samuel (1739- 1817), a French political economist and statesman, was born at Paris on the 14th December 1739. He studied for the medical profession, but did not enter upon practice, his attention having been early directed to economic questions through his friendship with Quesnay, Turgot, and other leaders of the school known as the Economists. To this school he rendered valuable service by several pamphlets on financial questions, and numerous articles representing and advocating its views in a popular style in the Journal de ΓAgriculture, du Commerce, et des Finances, and the Ephemerides du Citoyen, of which he was successively editor. In 1772 he accepted the office of secretary of the Council of Publip Instruction from Stanislas Poniatowski, king of Poland. Two years later he was recalled to his native country by the advent of his friend Turgot to power. After assisting the minister in his wisely-conceived but unavailing schemes of reform during the brief period of his tenure of office, Dupont shared his dismissal and retired to Gâtinais, in the neighbourhood of Nemours, where he employed himself in agricultural improvements. During his leisure he wrote a translation of Ariosto (1781), and Mémoires sur la vie de Turgot (1782). He was drawn from his retirement by Vergennes, who employed him in preparing, along -with the English commissioner Dr James Hutton, the treaty for the recognition of the independence of the United States (1782), and a treaty of commerce with Great Britain (1786). Under Calonne he was admitted to the Council of State, and appointed commissary-general of commerce. During the Revolution period he advocated reform and constitutional monarchy as against the views of the extreme republicans, and was therefore destined for ...