DUPONT DE L'EURE, JACQUES CHARLES 1855), French lawyer and statesman, was born at Neubourg, Eure, in Normandy, on Feb. 27, 1767. In 1789 he was an advocate at the parlement of Normandy. In 1798 he was a member of the Council of Five Hundred, and in 1813 he became a member of the Corps Legislatif. During the Hundred Days he was vice-president of the chamber of deputies, and when the allied armies entered Paris he was one of the commissioners to negotiate with the allied sover eigns. From 1817 till 1849 he was uninterruptedly a member of the chamber of deputies, acting consistently with the liberal oppo sition. For a few months in 1830 he held office as minister of jus tice, but resigned before the close of the year and resumed his place in the opposition. At the revolution of 1848 Dupont de l'Eure was made president of the provisional assembly as being its oldest member. He died at Rouge-Peniers, Eure, on Mar. 2, 1855. His fidelity to the cause of constitutional Liberalism won for him the name of the Aristides of the French tribune.
Du Pont was a member of the states-general, and then of the Constituent Assembly, of which he was elected president on Oct. 16, 1790. Buf after Aug. Io, 1792, when he took the side of the king, he was driven into hiding. He was eventually arrested and imprisoned in La Force (1794). The death of Robespierre saved him from the guillotine. As a member of the Council of Five Hundred, Du Pont was a leader of the reaction. After the re publican triumph on the 18th Fructidor (Sept. 4), 1797 his house was sacked by the mob, and in 1799 he emigrated to the United States. Jefferson requested him to prepare a scheme of national education, which was published in 1800 under the title Sur l'educa lion nationale dans les Etats-Unis d'Amerique. Though the scheme was not carried out in the United States, several of its features have been adopted in the existing French code. On his return to France in 1802 he was elected to the Institut. In 1814 he was secretary to the provisional Government, and on the restoration he was made a councillor of State. In 1815 he returned to America, and died at Eleutherian Mills near Wilmington, Delaware, on Aug. 6, 1817.
The powder-mills founded by his son Eleuthere at Wilmington, brought the family considerable wealth. Du Pont's grandson, Ad miral Samuel Francis Du Pont (1803-65), played a conspicuous part as a U.S. naval officer in the American Civil War.
See Schelle, Du Pont de Nemours et l'ecole physiocratique (1888) .
DU PONT DE NEMOURS AND COMPANY, E. I., organized in 1802 as a gunpowder company, has developed into a world-known chemical manufacturing corporation, with numerous subsidiary and affiliated companies and with connections in many foreign countries. Among the diversified products of the parent company and its associates, in addition to explosives, are dyes, paint, pigments, lacquers, auto finishes, rayon, artificial leathers and rubberized fabrics, pyroxylin plastics, synthetic ammonia, industrial alcohols and a wide range of cellulose and other chem ical products, all contributing largely to the economic progress of the world. Its commercial explosives have helped to build canals, railroads, highways and tunnels, and have been the basis of the great coal and ore mining operations of the western continent. It has been the chief source of military explosives in all wars of the United States since 1802 and in the World War it supplied of the explosives used by the Allies. It has had eight presi dents since its founding, all members of the du Pont family. Headquarters are at Wilmington, Del., where the original powder plant was built by Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours, its founder, who had learned to manufacture powder in the French Government factory. (L. DU P.) DU PONT HIGHWAY: see COLEMAN DU PONT ROAD.