practised as a barrister at Liége, took a prominent part in the Liberal movement, and in June 1847 was returned to the Chamber as member for Liége. In August of the same year he was appointed minister of public works in the Rogier cabinet, and from 1848 to 1852 was minister of finance. He founded the Banque Nationale and the Caisse d’Épargne, abolished the newspaper tax, reduced the postage, and modified the customs duties as a preliminary to a decided free-trade policy. The Liberalism of the cabinet, in which Frère-Orban exercised an influence hardly inferior to that of Rogier, was, however, distasteful to Napoleon III. Frère-Orban, to facilitate the negotiations for a new commercial treaty, conceded to France a law of copyright, which proved highly unpopular in Belgium, and he resigned office, soon followed by the rest of the cabinet. His work La Mainmorte et la charité (1854–1857), published under the pseudonym of “Jean van Damme,” contributed greatly to restore his party to power in 1857, when he again became minister of finance. He now embodied his free-trade principles in commercial treaties with England and France, and abolished the octroi duties and the tolls on the national roads. He resigned in 1861 on the gold question, but soon resumed office, and in 1868 succeeded Rogier as prime minister. In 1869 he defeated the attempt of France to gain control of the Luxemburg railways, but, despite this service to his country, fell from power at the elections of 1870. He returned to office in 1878 as president of the council and foreign minister. He provoked the bitter opposition of the Clerical party by his law of 1879 establishing secular primary education, and in 1880 went so far as to break off diplomatic relations with the Vatican. He next found himself at variance with the Radicals, whose leader, Janson, moved the introduction of universal suffrage. Frère-Orban, while rejecting the proposal, conceded an extension of the franchise (1883); but the hostility of the Radicals, and the discontent caused by a financial crisis, overthrew the government at the elections of 1884. Frère-Orban continued to take an active part in politics as leader of the Liberal opposition till 1894, when he failed to secure re-election. He died at Brussels on the 2nd of January 1896. Besides the work above mentioned, he published La Question monétaire (1874); La Question monétaire en Belgique in 1889; Échange de vues entre MM. Frère-Orban et E. de Laveleye (1890); and La Révision constitutionnelle en Belgique et ses conséquences (1894). He was also the author of numerous pamphlets, among which may be mentioned his last work, La Situation présente (1895).
FRÉRET, NICOLAS (1688–1749), French scholar, was born
at Paris on the 15th of February 1688. His father was procureur
to the parlement of Paris, and destined him to the profession
of the law. His first tutors were the historian Charles Rollin
and Father Desmolets (1677–1760). Amongst his early studies
history, chronology and mythology held a prominent place.
To please his father he studied law and began to practise at the
bar; but the force of his genius soon carried him into his own
path. At nineteen he was admitted to a society of learned men
before whom he read memoirs on the religion of the Greeks,
on the worship of Bacchus, of Ceres, of Cybele and of Apollo.
He was hardly twenty-six years of age when he was admitted
as pupil to the Academy of Inscriptions. One of the first
memoirs which he read was a learned and critical discourse,
Sur l’origine des Francs (1714). He maintained that the Franks
were a league of South German tribes and not, according to the
legend then almost universally received, a nation of free men
deriving from Greece or Troy, who had kept their civilization
intact in the heart of a barbarous country. These sensible
views excited great indignation in the Abbé Vertot, who denounced
Fréret to the government as a libeller of the monarchy.
A lettre de cachet was issued, and Fréret was sent to the Bastille.
During his three months of confinement he devoted himself to
the study of the works of Xenophon, the fruit of which appeared
later in his memoir on the Cyropaedia. From the time of his
liberation in March 1715 his life was uneventful. In January
1716 he was received associate of the Academy of Inscriptions,
and in December 1742 he was made perpetual secretary. He
worked without intermission for the interests of the Academy,
not even claiming any property in his own writings, which were
printed in the Recueil de l’académie des inscriptions. The list
of his memoirs, many of them posthumous, occupies four columns
of the Nouvelle Biographie générale. They treat of history,
chronology, geography, mythology and religion. Throughout
he appears as the keen, learned and original critic; examining
into the comparative value of documents, distinguishing between
the mythical and the historical, and separating traditions with
an historical element from pure fables and legends. He rejected
the extreme pretensions of the chronology of Egypt and China,
and at the same time controverted the scheme of Sir Isaac
Newton as too limited. He investigated the mythology not only
of the Greeks, but of the Celts, the Germans, the Chinese and
the Indians. He was a vigorous opponent of the theory that
the stories of mythology may be referred to historic originals.
He also suggested that Greek mythology owed much to the
Phoenicians and Egyptians. He was one of the first scholars of
Europe to undertake the study of the Chinese language; and in
this he was engaged at the time of his committal to the Bastille.
He died in Paris on the 8th of March 1749.
Long after his death several works of an atheistic character were falsely attributed to him, and were long believed to be his. The most famous of these spurious works are the Examen critique des apologistes de la religion chrétienne (1766), and the Lettre de Thrasybule à Leucippe, printed in London about 1768. A very defective and inaccurate edition of Fréret’s works was published in 1796–1799. A new and complete edition was projected by Champollion-Figeac, but of this only the first volume appeared (1825). It contains a life of Fréret. His manuscripts, after passing through many hands, were deposited in the library of the Institute. The best account of his works is “Examen critique des ouvrages composés par Fréret” in C. A. Walckenaer’s Recueil des notices, &c. (1841–1850). See also Quérard’s France littéraire.
FRÉRON, ÉLIE CATHERINE (1719–1776), French critic and
controversialist, was born at Quimper in 1719. He was educated
by the Jesuits, and made such rapid progress in his studies
that before the age of twenty he was appointed professor at the
college of Louis-le-Grand. He became a contributor to the
Observations sur les écrits modernes of the abbé Guyot Desfontaines.
The very fact of his collaboration with Desfontaines,
one of Voltaire’s bitterest enemies, was sufficient to arouse the
latter’s hostility, and although Fréron had begun his career as
one of his admirers, his attitude towards Voltaire soon changed.
Fréron in 1746 founded a similar journal of his own, entitled
Lettres de la Comtesse de . . . It was suppressed in 1749, but he
immediately replaced it by Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps,
which, with the exception of a short suspension in 1752, on
account of an attack on the character of Voltaire, was continued
till 1754, when it was succeeded by the more ambitious Année
littéraire. His death at Paris on the 10th of March 1776 is said
to have been hastened by the temporary suppression of this
journal. Fréron is now remembered solely for his attacks on
Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, and by the retaliations they
provoked on the part of Voltaire, who, besides attacking him in
epigrams, and even incidentally in some of his tragedies, directed
against him a virulent satire, Le Pauvre diable, and made him
the principal personage in a comedy L’Écossaise, in which the
journal of Fréron is designated L’Âne littéraire. A further
attack on Fréron entitled Anecdotes sur Fréron . . . (1760),
published anonymously, is generally attributed to Voltaire.
Fréron was the author of Ode sur la bataille de Fontenoy (1745); Histoire de Marie Stuart (1742, 2 vols.); and Histoire de l’empire d’Allemagne, (1771, 8 vols.). See Ch. Nisard, Les Ennemis de Voltaire (1853); Despois, Journalistes et journaux du XVIII e siècle; Barthélemy, Les confessions de Fréron: Ch. Monselet, Fréron, ou l’illustre critique (1864); Fréron, sa vie, souvenirs, &c. (1876).
FRÉRON, LOUIS MARIE STANISLAS (1754–1802), French
revolutionist, son of the preceding, was born at Paris on the 17th
of August 1754. His name was, on the death of his father,
attached to L’Année littéraire, which was continued till 1790
and edited successively by the abbés G. M. Royou and J. L.
Geoffroy. On the outbreak of the revolution Fréron, who was a
schoolfellow of Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, established
