MORELLET, ANDR

born March 7, 1727, Lyon died Jan. 12, 1819, Paris French economist and miscellaneous writer, an associate of the Philosophes and a contributor to the Encyclopdie. Educated by the Jesuits in Lyon and at the Sorbonne, Morellet took holy orders, but his designation of abb was the chief thing clerical about him. A frequenter of the salon of Mme Geoffrin (of whom he wrote an loge), he had a ready and biting wit, and Voltaire called him L'Abb Mord-les (the Abb Bite-Them). As an economist he expounded the views of Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot. In 1785 he was elected to the Acadmie Franaise and preserved its archives during the Terror, which he fearlessly condemned in several pamphlets. His Mlanges de littrature et de philosophie du XVIIIe sicle, containing selections from his previous works, appeared in 1818, and his valuable, elegantly written Mmoires sur le XVIIIe sicle et la Rvolution was published in 1821.