Victor Lanjuinais

Victor Ambroise Lanjuinais

Victor Ambroise, Viscount de Lanjuinais (born November 5, 1802 in Paris , † January 1, 1869 in Paris) was a French politician. From June 2 to October 31, 1849 he was Minister of Agriculture and Trade and at the end of 1851 was one of the opponents of the coup of Napoleon III.

Parentage and Career during the July Monarchy

Victor Ambroise Lanjuinais was the younger son of the French politician Jean-Denis Lanjuinais (1753-1827) and brother of Paul Eugène Lanjuinais (1799-1872). He studied law in Paris, became a lawyer in 1821, which he remained until 1830, when he became a substitute for the royal state procurator at the civil tribunal of the Seine. He was also given the general secretariat at the postal administration, but his progressive attitude drove him out of his position as early as 1831. On February 17, 1838 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies by the 3rd College of the Loire-Inférieure (Pont-Rousseau, a district of Rezé ) in place of Adolphe Billault and the King awarded him the Cross of the Legion of Honor . His mandate was renewed on March 2, 1839, July 9, 1842 and August 1, 1846.

Lanjuinais belonged to the moderate opposition, mostly voted with the tiers-parti and appeared moderately against Guizot's policies . He was in favor of the incompatibility of several offices in one person and the inclusion of capacities in the electoral colleges, on the other hand he fought against the princely endowments and the construction of new fortifications, criticized the branding of some legitimist deputies, voted against Pritchard's indemnity and revealed the loopholes in the stands Beniers supplying the army.

In 1845 Lanjuimais bought with his friend Alexis de Tocqueville , whose tendency to travel he shared, and with Corelle the journal Le Commerce , in which he dealt in particular with economic and maritime issues. Like Tocqueville, he was concerned about the fate of the French colony of Algeria, where the two friends met again in 1846. In 1847 Lanjuinais, although a man of the opposition, zealously opposed the political reform banquets organized by critical regime supporters and republican-minded opponents of the July monarchy , in which sometimes violent attacks were ridden against the government, and declined to visit one on June 9, 1847 held banquets in the Château-rouge. However, he spoke out in favor of the proposal for electoral reform.

Role in the Constituent Assembly 1848

After the February Revolution of 1848 , the Loire-Inférieure sent Lanjuinais to the constituent national assembly in April 1848 ; he was first on the list with around 113,000 votes. Although a friend of the constitutional monarchy , he sincerely served the republic now established in his homeland. He became a member and first secretary of the Finance Committee, vigorously opposed socialist opinions, advocated the economic doctrines of the liberal school and belonged to the moderate right. With this he voted, among other things, for the prosecution of Blanc and Caussidière , for the reintroduction of guilty detention , against the right to work , against the amnesty , for the ban on political clubs and against the abolition of the beverage tax.

Lanjuinais was against the use of too much paper money and advocated covering the deficit by consolidating treasury bills and savings books and by issuing a loan of 200 million francs in pensions to the state. Lasteyrie and Berryer supported his proposals, which were vigorously attacked, and he got through because d'Argout , governor of the Bank of France , and the stockbrokers' syndic shared his view.

Lanjuinais also received reports on savings banks, treasury bills and new bank formation. He was also a member of the investigative commission that searched for the perpetrators of the unrest of May 15, 1848 and the uprising of June 23, 1848, and voted with the majority for the punishment of the guilty. When, after the adoption of the Constitution, Rateau demanded the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on behalf of the right and the Left vehemently opposed this request, Lanjuinais sought to prevent new collisions between the parties in January 1849 by proposing an amendment to Rateau's motion that the Constituent Assembly may itself dissolve voluntarily after they have voted for the electoral law. His compromise proposal went through.

Minister of the Second Republic

In the general elections for the legislative national assembly held in May 1849, Lanjuinais was passed over because he did not want to make promises to influential, strictly royalist-minded campaigners in the Loire-Inférieure department that he would work for the restoration of kingship. So he retired to the country. But on June 2, 1849, he was appointed Minister of Commerce and Agriculture in Odilon Barrot's cabinet . With the support of the Union électorale , he came into the legislature in the supplementary elections in Paris on July 8th; he was first on the list, had more votes than Louis Lucien Bonaparte , namely 127,556, and took his seat on the moderate right.

Lanjuimais also replaced Falloux in the Ministry of Public Education on an interim basis and obtained permission for the bishops to meet in provincial synods of their own free will in 1849, with the government preserving all rights to which it was entitled under the Concordat . As Minister of Commerce, Lanjuinais pushed through the reduction of the quarantine for ships coming from the Levant . He also ordered the lifting of the monopoly of the Parisian bakeries, but this decision, taken in the last days of his participation in government, was withdrawn by his successor before it was implemented.

As a supporter of the parliamentary government, Lanjuinais could not make friends with the personal politics of the Prince-President (Prince-President) Louis Napoléon Bonaparte and, like Odilon Barrot, resigned from his offices on October 31, 1849. He has since joined the Republican-minded minority in the Legislative Assembly. He took part in several commissions of interest, including the one charged with the investigation of the navy, became president and rapporteur of the commission that examined the production and consumption of slaughtered meat, and drafted a general report for them, like a special report on the addition of marines composed. In 1852 G. Hubbard published his national economic works; He wrote many things, for example in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1865 about Nouvelles recherches sur la question de l'or and the biographies of his father ( Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de J.-D. Lanjuinais , 1832) and his older brother ( Notice hist. Sur Paul-Eugène, comte de Lanjuinais , 1848).

Career during the Second Empire

On January 14, 1851, Lanjuinais reported to the commission which was discussing the measures to be taken after the removal of General Nicolas Changarnier , and the commission contained many of the rebukes of the ministry which now fell. In July he voted against the constitutional revision requested by Louis Napoléon, which would allow the head of state to be re-elected indefinitely, and on November 17 in favor of the Quaestor's motion, so that the Prince-President knew exactly how little he felt for him.

On December 2, 1851 Lanjuinais went with a number of comrades to Odilon Barrot, where they issued a protest against the coup d'état Louis Napoléon and declared him deposed. Then he went to the mairie of the 10th arrondissement, took part in all the steps of the assembled opponents of the president and signed the protest against him. Soldiers dispersed the gathering and Lanjuinais was arrested and taken to Vincennes , but released on December 5th.

As a result, Lanjuinais long abstained from all public functions, because he did not want to swear a political oath, and in 1857 turned down the candidacy for the legislative body offered to him by the opposition. It was not until 1863 that he accepted a mandate in this from the opposition; the second constituency of the Loire-Inférieure elected him to parliament on June 1 of this year with 12,248 of 24,048 votes. In May 1864 he separated from his colleagues on the left in order to support the so-called coalition law with Émile Ollivier . In 1864 he formed an imperialist left with Ollivier and Darimon . He died on January 1, 1869 in Paris at the age of 66 and was buried in the family vault in the Père Lachaise cemetery.

literature

• Arthur Kleinschmidt : Lanjuinais (Victor Ambroise, Vicomte de) . In: Johann Samuelersch , Johann Gottfried Gruber (Hrsg.): General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts . Section 2, Vol. 42 (1888), pp. 70f.
• Lanjuinais, Victor Ambroise . In: Adolphe Robert, Edgar Bourloton, Gaston Cougny (eds.): Dictionnaire des parlementaires français de 1789 à 1889 . Vol. 3 (1891), pp. 581f.