Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Jean Louis Delolme

DELOLME, Jean Louis (1740-1806), jurist and constitutional writer, was born at Geneva in 1740. He studied for the bar, and had entered on the profession of an advocate in his native town when he was obliged to emigrate on account of the publication of a pamphlet entitled Examen de trois parts de droit, which gave offence to the authorities of the town. He found an asylum in England, where he lived for several years on the meagre and precarious income derived from occasional contributions to various journals. He maintained an honourable independence, however, until 1775, when he found himself compelled to accept aid from a charitable society to enable him to return home. He died at Sewen, a village in the canton of Schwytz, on the 16th July 1806. During his exile Delolme made a careful study of the English constitution, the results of which he published in his La Constitution de l'Angleterre (Amsterdam, 1771), of which an enlarged and improved edition in English appeared in 1772, and was several times reprinted. The work excited much interest as the production of a foreigner, and as containing many acute observations on the causes of the excellence of the English constitution as compared with that of other countries. It is, however, wanting in breadth of view, being written before the period when constitutional questions were treated in a philosophical manner. Several editions were published after the author's death, the latest being in 1853 by MacGregor. Delolme also wrote A Parallel between the English Government and the former Government of Sweden (1772), A History of the Flagellants (1782), based upon a work of Boileau's, An Essay on the Union of Scotland and England (1787), and one or two smaller works.