Description:

MARIE JOSEPH DE LAFAYETTE
(1757 - 1834) French statesman and military officer who served as a major general under Washington and was instrumental in the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Fine content manuscript L.S. "Lafayette", 1p. 4to., Paris, June 8, 1829, addressed in his hand to: "Peter Du Ponceau, Esq. Philadelphia". Du Ponceau came to America in December 1777 as Baron von Steuben's secretary. A captain in the Continental Army, he spent the winter of 1778 at Valley Forge, where he took the Oath of Allegiance. Lafayette gives lessons on French politics to the prominent American, in part: "...Just a line, my dear comrade in arms, to send you the newspaper [not present] that gives the most accurate account of what was said in the Chamber[the lower house of Parliament]...Familiarity with the French legislature is necessary to understand it rightly, and consequently to translate it...It's difficult for an American...to understand all those cries for democracy when only one in 100 citizens can vote, and that in a supposedly representative government, two of the powers are hereditary [i.e., the King and House of Nobles]. Neither can they understand how the double vote was permitted...which after the elections for the district councils, assembles the most taxed quarter to vote a second time. With pleasure I seized the opportunity to renew my profession of Republican faith before the King's court, and to pick up on an expression in the King's speech, which the minister of the interior had keyed into by applying it to the Constituent Assembly...You know that the anomaly of the double vote was established after the assassination of the Duke of Berry...". The Duke de Berry was the son of King Charles X. Lafayette, ever a committed Republican, declined to become dictator after playing a significant role in the revolution which overthrew Charles X the year after this letter (1830). Very good.

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October 9, 2010 11:00 AM EDT
Stamford, CT, US

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