Défense des constitutions américaines, ou De la nécessité d’une balance dans les pouvoirs d’un gouvernement libre, par M. John Adams: Avec des Notes et Observations de M. de la Croix, Professeur de Droit Public au Lycée
Authors of source text
Contributions
- L.M. (Pierre-Bernard de Lamare)
- translator
- François Buisson
- publisher
Related resources
- is translation of
- A defence of the constitutions of government of the United States of America: Against the Attack of M. Turgot in his Letter to Dr. Price, Dated the twenty-second day of March, 1778 has translation
- has paratext
- Défense des constitutions américaines, ou De la nécessité d’une balance dans les pouvoirs d’un gouvernement libre, par M. John Adams: Avec des Notes et Observations de M. de la Croix, Professeur de Droit Public au Lycée paratext
Notes
This abridged translation of Adams' pro-British constitutional work, itself heavily influenced by Jean-Louis Delolme, appeared in 1792, too late for the National Assembly constitutional debates. There is a strong likelihood that Jefferson, who had originally commissioned the translation in 1787 through his French publisher Froullé, was persuaded to suppress it by the 'Américaniste' circle centred around Lafayette, Condorcet, Dupont de Nemours et al. In its place, they published their own contribution to the debate in their heavily annotated version of Stevens' pamphlet 'Observations on Government etc.', which appeared in January 1789.
See Joyce Appleby, 'The Jefferson-Adams Rupture and the first French translation of John Adams' "Defence"' (1968, The American Historical Review, vol.73, no.4), p.1086 fn.
Peter Michael Jones suggests Pierre-Bernard Lamare as the translator in, 'Translations into French of Arthur Young’s Travels in France (1791–1801)' (2017, La Révolution française, no.12, para.19). See also Antonio de Francesco, 'Traduire pour stabiliser. L’exemple des ouvrages américains parus en français à la veille de la République, printemps-été 1792' (journals.openedition.org/lrf/1780).