‎(HAY DU CHASTELET, P.)‎
‎Traité de la politique de France. Reveü, corrigé, & augmenté d'une Seconde partie. Avec quelques réflexions sur ce Traité par le Sr. Ormegregny.‎

‎Cologne (Amsterdam), P. du Marteau, 1677. 2 volumes in 1. (12), 13-360 pp.; 165, (2) pp. 12mo. Contemporary overlapping vellum. Bourgeois & André 2969; Sauvy, Livres saisis à Paris, p. 5; Le Bucher bibliographique, 525; not in Kress; not in Goldsmiths; not in Einaudi; INED 1073. Augmented edition. The second part has its own separate title-page: Reflexions sur le IV & V Chapitres de la Politique de France de Monsieur P.H. Marquis de C. Ou il censure le clergé de Rome, & les Huguenots. Par le Sieur de L'Ormegigny. A Cologne, Chez Pierre du Marteau, 1677. Upon its first publication in 1669, also anonymously and outside France, the identity of the author was discovered and he was put in the Bastille (for 15 days). The author may be considered as a precursor of Vauban and Castel de Saint Pierre for his revolutionary ideas of reforming the tax system, and for his ideas concerning the clergy, commerce and protestants, etc. 'In Colbert's time Paul Hay, marquis de Chatelet, and forerunner of Vauban, pointed out that extreme poverty conducted to death and disease and thus served to depeople rural regions; that tax reforms were necessary to improve economic conditions. Although he opposed the association of rural with urban workers, on the ground that the former would become insolent and acquire corrupt customs, he asserted, like Colbert, that man's happiness is the end of 'la politique.' He condemned the expulsion of the Huguenots as unchristian' (Spengler, French predecessors of Malthus, p. 12). Spengler also points to the fact that this work inspired some of Vauban's ideas on taxation. See also: Vignes, Origines de la dîme de Vauban. The Réflexions added under the pseudonym of Ormegregny are by Pierre Dumoulin. They deal with the two chapters concerning the clergy and the protestants. ‎

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