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Antoine Lavoisier: French Revolution
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Pierre-Samuel du Pont was a close friend of Antoine Lavoisier. The two first met when Lavoisier was collecting taxes at the Ferme Générale and du Pont was gaining a reputation as a political writer and economist. Du Pont was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1789 as a delegate from the third estate of Nemours. During the French Revolution, du Pont, who supported a constitutional monarchy, volunteered to help guard Louis XVI when a mob attacked the palace in 1792. Eventually arrested, du Pont was spared death at the guillotine because of the fall of Maximilien Robespierre, the architect of the Reign of Terror. Du Pont sought a new life in the United States in 1799, because there, "persecuted men can find safety . . . [and] fortunes can be rebuilt." Having learned the newest methods of gunpowder manufacturing from Lavoisier, du Pont's son Eleuthère Irénée opened a powder works near Wilmington, Delaware, in 1802.
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Lavoisier was politically liberal and shared many of the ideas of the philosophes. He was deeply persuaded of the need for social reform in France. Because of this, he played an active part in the events preceding the French Revolution. He served on a committee concerned with the social conditions of France and proposed tax reforms and new economic strategies. He ... served on a committee that explored hospitals and prisons of Paris and then reccommended remedies for their horrible state. During the revolution, he published a report on the state of France's finances.
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In 1789 the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier published what might be considered the first list of elemental substances based on Boyle's definition. Lavoisier's list of elements was established on the basis of a careful, quantitative study of decomposition and recombination reactions.
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Of key significance in Lavoisier's life was his study of law. This led to an interest in French politics, and as a result, he obtained a position as tax collector in the Ferme Generale, a private tax-collection company, at the age of 26, where he attempted to introduce reforms in the French monetary and taxation system. While in government work, he helped develop the metric system to secure uniformity of weights and measures throughout France. As one of 28 French tax collectors Lavoisier was branded a traitor by revolutionists in 1794 and guillotined at the age of 51. Ironically, Lavoisier was one of the few liberals in his position.
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In 1771, Lavoisier married Marie-Anne-Pierette Paulze (1758-1836). She was 14 at the time of her marriage with Lavoisier. Her father was a colleague of Lavoisier in the Farmers General. Marie Paulze’s mother was a niece of Abbe Terray, France’s Controller General of Finances and one of the most influential men of the French kingdom. Lavoisier’s marriage with Marie Paulze proved to be very successful. She was a skilled artist, engraver and painter.
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In 1789, Lavoisier failed to be elected at the States Generals, and steered clear of political affairs. He resigned from his office at the Ferme Générale shortly before its abolition in 1791, but was considered as an consultant in financial affairs and became the director of the Discount Bank, and a commissioner of the Public Treasury, and expressed many ideas about the reforms of French public finance and taxation. At the same time, he took part to the major reform of the unification of the weights and measures system. But, as a former Fermier Général and like his peers, among them his father-in-law, Jacques Paulze, he was arrested in 1794. They were accused of exactions and embezzlments and transferred to the Conciergerie. On the 19 floréal an II (May 8, 1794), they were all sentenced to death and executed.
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