LINGUET, SIMON NICOLAS HENRI French journalist and advocate, was born on July 14, 1736, at Rheims. He was admitted to the bar in 1764, where he became one of the most famous pleaders of his century, but was dis missed in 1775 on account of his bitter attacks against his fellow advocates, especially against Gerbier (1725-88). He then founded the Journal de politique et de litterature, but was compelled to resign and leave the country of ter the publication of a sarcastic article on the French Academy. After some years as a free-lance abroad, publishing the Annales politiques, civiles et litteraires in London and Brussels, he attempted to return to France in 178o, and was imprisoned for two years for an attack on the duc de Duras (1715-89). After a further period abroad he returned to France in 1786 as an Austrian councillor of state, and obtained 24,000 livres from the duc d'Aiguillon for legal services rendered some 15 years earlier. His fame at the time surpassed that of his rival Beaumarchais. He then visited the emperor at Vienna to plead the case of Van der Noot and the rebels of Brabant. On
his return to Paris in I791 he defended the rights of San Domingo before the National Assembly; his last work was written in defence of Louis XVI. He retired to Marnes, near Ville d'Avray to escape the Terror, but was captured and guillotined at Paris on June 27, on the charge of "having flattered the despots of Vienna and London." Linguet's writings include Histoire du siecle d'Alexandre le Grand (Amsterdam, I 762) ; Histoire impartiale des Jesuites (Madrid, 1768, condemned to be burned) ; Fanatisme des philosophes (Geneva and Paris, 1764) ; Histoire des revolutions de l'empire romain (1766-68); Theorie des lois civiles (an attack on the politics of Montesquieu, London, 1767) ; Memoires sur la Bastille (London, 1789, Eng. trans. Dublin, 1783 and Edinburgh, 1884-87) . His best legal treatise is Memoire pour le comte de Morangies (1772). See J. Cruppi, Un avocat journalists au 18e siecle, Linguet (1895) ; A. Philipp, Linguet, ein Nationalokonom des XVIII. Jahrhunderts (Zurich, 1896) ; A. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme utopique (1898) , pp. 77-131.