BRISSOT DE WARVILLE, Jean Pierre, French political writer, and one of the leaders of the Girondists (q.v.) : b. Ouarville, near Chartres, 14 Jan. 1754; d. Paris, 30 Oct 1793. He took the name D'Ouarville, which he after ward anglicized into De Warville, from the village of Ouarville where he was born. He was designed for tie law, and placed with a procurator in Paris; but early turned his at tention to public affairs, associating himself with such men as Eldon, Robespierre, Marat, etc. In 1780 he published his (Theorie des lois crirninelles) and two years afterward an im portant collection called the (Bibliotheque des lois criminelles.> During this period he edited for a time, at Boulogne-sur-Mer, the Courier de rEurope, a translation from an English journal. He also visited England, where he endeavored to found a lyceum and establish a journal in connection with it. Failing in this enterprise, he returned to Paris, where his works had already classed him among the philanthropic theorists of the day. He was suspected of the authorship of an anonymous pamphlet, and thrown into the Bastile. On his liberation he engaged with Clavieres and Mirabeau in some works on finance, which ap peared under the name of the latter. Threatened with a new arrest, he escaped to England, and being there introduced to the Society for the Abolition of Negro Slavery, resolved to form a similar society in Paris. This society, which numbered many distin guished names among its members, and ulti mately accomplished its object, he founded along with Clavieres, Mirabeau and others, and undertook a voyage to the United States to study on its behalf the problem of emancipa tion. On his return the Revolution was about
to break out, and Brissot embraced it with ardor. He was not a member of the States General, but was elected to the National As sembly for Paris and to the Convention for the department of the Eure et Loir. He established a journal, Le Patriote Francais, which at once became the recognized organ of the Republi cans. As leader of the Girondist party, his history belongs henceforward to the history of France. He voted, out of policy, for the death of Louis XVI, but urged a confirmation by the vote of the people; and he caused war to be declared against Holland and England in February 1793. This was his last political act. Until the close of his career he was engaged in defending himself against the Montagnards. When the Jacobins came into power, he was guillotined with 20 other Girondist leaders. Brissot was inferior to Vergniaud as an orator, but his writings exercised a powerful influence on the Revolution. In the early part of his career his opinions were very extreme. In a passage, afterward used against him, he carried his advocacy of individual rights so far as to justify not only theft, but cannibalism. Proud hon was accused of having borrowed from him the maxim, °La propriete c'est le vol." His pour server a l'histoire de la Revo lution' appeared in 1830 at Paris in four vol umes (new edition by Lescure, 1877). Consult Desmoulins, (The History of the Brissotins' (translated from the French, London 1794).