LACRETELLE, PIERRE Louis, 1751-1824; b. France; educated for the practice of law he drifted, by the philosophical tendency of his mind, into authorship, and first became known by the humanitarian direction of his essays. LI Paris he was made one of the• editors of the Grand Repertoire de Jurisprudence. In 1784 he published several essays, one of which, a discourse on the prejudices which attach to infamous punish ment, was crowned by the academy of Metz. Robespierre was one of the competitors for the same honor. Lacretelle was intimately associated with La liarpe in the publi cation of the Mercure de France, in which his writings attracted the attention and friendship of D'Alembert, Condorcet, Turgot, and Malesherbes. At the beginning of the French, revolution he was a member of the national assembly, voted for the new constitution making France a constitutional monarchy, and stubbornly adhered to it through the later developments of the revolution by which it was overturned, adopting for his motto: " The constitution entire, and nothing but the constitution." Voting
against the accusation of Lafayette, he was accused of royalism and left Paris to save his head. Under the directory and the empire he was inconspicuously industrious in literary labor as a member of the institut. In 1817 he associated with Benj. Constant and others to establish the Minerve Francaise. This was suppressed by the4overnment of Louis XVIII. Soon after, some essays, too liberal and incisive, procured him a month in prison. Being a man of estate, he published his own essays when their char acter made it unsafe for publishers to undertake them. His writings exhibit an earnest desire to ameliorate the cruelties of law and to promote education. IIis complete works were published in Paris in 1824 in 6 vols. quarto.