GAETE, M.M. CH. GAUDIN, DUC DE.

Mémoires, souvenirs, opinions et écrits de Duc de Gaëte, ancien ministre des finances, ex-député, gouverneur de la Banque de France. Paris, Baudouin frères, 1826 (for the third volume:) Paris, Impr. de Goetsy, 1834. 3 volumes. - (Followed by:) RAPPORT de la Commission libre nommée par les manufacturiers et négocians de Paris, sur l'enquête relative à l'état actuel de l'industrie du coton en France.

      Paris, Impr. de Sellingue, 1829. Two works in 4 volumes, bound in 3. (4), 336 pp.; (4), 599, (1) pp.; 317 pp.; ix, (1), 238, (1, errata) pp. 8vo. Contemporary half calf, marbled boards, spines gilt with gilt lettering (volume 3 not uniform). First work: Kress C.1664 & 3727; Goldsmiths 24970 & 28570; Catalogue de l'Histoire de France, iii, p. 242 (269-70); not in Einaudi. First edition of all volumes. The third volume containing the 'Supplément' was published 8 years later and is almost always lacking. These memoirs deal almost exclusively with finance. Martin Michel Charles Gaudin, duc de Gaëte (1756-1841), was placed at the age of seventeen in the office of the ministry of finance. In 1791 he was appointed one of the commissioners of the national treasury. He resigned office at the breaking out of the Terror and refused the portfolio of finance under the Directory contenting himself with being the general commissioner of the post office, but accepted it after the 18th brumaire from the hands of the First Consul. He continued to hold his office up to the fall of the empire, and during the Hundred Days. He assisted in the reorganisation of the administration of the system of finance. In the present work, published to defend his financial administration against attacks from the more ardent among the Legitimists, the Duc de Gaëte states that, when he first entered the ministry, the treasury only possessed in cash the miserable sum of 177,000 francs. He adds that on principle and from the first day he assumed office he pursued two main objects: first, to improve and consolidate (the national) credit by looking carefully after the interests of the creditors of the state; and second, to bring the ordinary revenue to the necessary level by taxes on consumption. He also successfully organised the system of collecting the taxes and the execution of the general land survey (Cadastre) by the law of the 15th of September 1807. Gaudin ranks as the author of the modern system of French financial administration, acting on the opinion he had expressed in his Notice Historique, that at the time of the outbreak of the revolution, the national assembly 'might easily have ameliorated the older system instead of destroying it' (Palgrave, ii, pp. 176/7). Gaudin is always described as honest, methodical and intelligent and proved to be one of the most capable financial ministers in French history, being responsible for all those Napoleonic measures which so splendidly restored the nation's shattered finances.Second work: Not in Kress; not in Goldsmiths; not in Einaudi. The results of an inquiry held from December 1, 1828 till February 15, 1829, about the cotton business and industry.