Jacques Peuchet's "Police and Municipalities" tr. by W. B. Allen (original) (raw)

Encyclopédie Méthodique (1782-1832), ninth volume, 1791 Dictionnaire de police et municipalité, under the heading "Jurisprudence"

Jacques Peuchet (1758-1830). French political philosopher highly influential in shaping public administration. He coined the term “bureaucratic” around 1798, approximately a decade after the world “bureaucracy” was first introduced. Born in Paris, Peuchet matriculated at the College of Louis-Le-Grand. He followed his classical studies with study in law. After graduating he assumed legal and administrative posts, prior to and continuing throughout the French Revolution (1789-1799), with intervals of self-imposed exile during periods he felt endangered. Political economy was the chief area of his contribution; he successfully introduced systematic statistics to French administrative procedure. His influence is reflected in Karl Marx’s translation of Peuchet’s treatise on suicide from Mémoires tirés des archives de la police de Paris (1838), which Marx viewed as having the “great advantage of having placed in evidence the contradictions and the monstrosity of modern life, not only in the conditions of particular classes but in the entire sphere and form of the actual social relations.” (Marx, Marx on Suicide, 1818-1883.) Peuchet’s greatest contribution is authorship of entries in the Encyclopédie Méthodique (1782-1832), most significantly those in the ninth volume, the 1791 Dictionnaire de police et municipalité, under the heading Jurisprudence. The “Police” entry contributes two important concepts. The first is clarification of the meaning of “public opinion,” which had become so vital a part of the thinking of “les idéologues” of the French Revolution era and had also influenced the thinking of politician and philosopher James Madison in the United States. The second contribution applies to the meaning of the term “police” itself. Peuchet presents the single, most comprehensive account existing in the literature of political science on the topic, examining the word from its broadest meaning as constitutional and moral order all the way to the maintenance of public order, health, and safety. Peuchet’s influence extended from political economy and public administration to fictional literature. His worked as a publicist and also edited the Gazette de France and the Mercure. His service as archivist for the Police Prefecture led to the publication of memoirs that provided the inspiration for Alexandre Dumas’s novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. In addition Peuchet pseudonymously authored the fictional work Mémoires de Mademoiselle Bertin sur la reine Marie-Antoinette, avec des notes et des éclaircissements (1824). That work served to complete Peuchet’s transition from a representative in the General Assembly during the 1789 revolution to a royalist quietly sympathetic to the executed queen.