ROBESPIERRE (Maximilien). Discourse crowned by the Royal Soc - Lot 218

ROBESPIERRE (Maximilien). Discourse crowned by the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of Metz, on the following questions, proposed for the subject of the Prize for the year 1784. 1° What is the origin of the opinion, which extends on all the Individuals of the same Family, a part of the shame attached to the infamous punishments which a culprit undergoes? [...]. Amsterdam, Et se trouve à paris, Mérigot, 1785. In-8, porphyry calf, gilt roulette, ornate smooth spine, yellow edges speckled with red (Period binding). Rare first edition of Robespierre's first political work as a young lawyer. It was awarded the prize of the Société royale de Metz, together with Lacretelle's Discours des préjugés des peines infamantes (1784). Copy with a few handwritten contemporary corrections. Bound after: LACRETELLE (Pierre-Louis). Discours sur le préjugé des peines infamantes, crowned at the Académie de Metz. Paris, Cuchet, 1784. First edition of the speech by Pierre-Louis Lacretelle (1751-1824), academician and jurisconsult, which was crowned at the same time as Robespierre's speech. It includes Réflexions sur les écrivains qui ont traité de la législation pénale & vues sur la réforme de cette législation, in which Lacretelle announces the drafting of the 1791 and 1810 codes. Precious volume containing the two texts on infamous penalties that were crowned in 1784 at the Académie de Metz, from the library of the lawyer Pierre-Louis Roederer (1754-1835), a moderate Jacobin who was part of the "patriotic triumvirate" alongside Robespierre and Pétion, bearing his engraved armorial bookplate and a handwritten ex-dono by Lacretelle on the title page of his Discours: M. Roederer, from the author. A deputy to the Estates-General, Roederer was also a member of the Académie de Metz. Elected as a deputy to the Estates-General, he became one of the most influential and active members of the Constituante. The 2 pages of handwritten notes at the beginning of Lacretelle's text (one inserted at the time of binding, the other loose), about the author's work and others on the same subject, are undoubtedly in his own hand. Upper stain in first book. Paper loss in lower margin of leaf E2, and one leaf (pp. 173-174) misplaced in book L, for the second. Rubbing to binding.