MORRIS (Governor). Mémorial de Gouverneur Morris. Paris and - Lot 50

MORRIS (Governor). Mémorial de Gouverneur Morris. Paris and Leipsig, Jules Renouard et Cie, 1841. 2 volumes in-8, xii-547-(3 of which the first and last are blank) + (4 of which the last is blank)-578-(2) pp. half-brown basane, smooth threaded spines with black title and giblets; the errata page counting for pages 511-512 erroneously bound at the end of volume I (binding circa 1890). FIRST EDITION OF THE FRENCH TRANSLATION, by Augustin Gandais, of this work originally published in English in Boston in 1832. AN IMPORTANT SOURCE ON THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES AND FRANCE. A collection of excerpts from Gouverneur Morris's memoirs, and correspondence addressed to or received by him, all integrated into a biographical narrative by American historian Jared Sparks. With a sharp pen and a Benjamin Franklin style of irony, Gouverneur Morris's writings shed valuable light on the end of the Ancien Régime and aristocratic circles, as well as on the movement of French, English and Americans in Europe, and on the commercial, financial, social and political networks of the late 18th century. AMERICAN LAWYER, FINANCIALIST, DIPLOMAT AND POLITICIAN, GOVERNOR MORRIS (1752-1816) was a member of the Constitutional Convention (1787) and helped draft the Federal Constitution. He then came to Paris on personal business, but also as Washington's secret agent, with an unofficial mission to negotiate the United States' debt (1789-1790): he established himself as an important figure not only in international politics, but also in Parisian social life, assiduously frequenting the salons. After a few months' service in England (1791), he was appointed by George Washington as ambassador to France (1792-1794), despite Jefferson's opposition to leaving the post. Gouverneur Morris was deeply sympathetic to the aspirations for political change being expressed in France, but he was critical of the French unicameral model, and frankly hostile to the violence into which the French Revolution had eventually descended. Returning to the U.S., he served as a senator from 1800 to 1803, in the ranks of the Federalists in favor of a strong central power.