Mortimer Ternaux

Mortimer Ternaux CLH
240px Portrait engraved by Jean-Adolphe Lafosse from a photograph by Pierre Petit (1865)
General Council of the Seine
In office 1837–1852
Member of the Chamber of Deputies for Ardennes
In office 21 May 1842 – 6 November 1871
Personal details
Born	(1808-11-22)22 November 1808 Paris, France
Died	Beaumont-les-Autels, Eure-et-Loir

Louis Mortimer Ternaux (22 November 1808 – 6 November 1871) was a French historian and politician.

Biography

Mortimer Ternaux was born in Paris, the son of Étienne Nicolas Louis Ternaux and nephew of the famous and very powerful manufacturer Baron Guillaume Louis Ternaux. He was appointed member of the commission of national rewards, then entered the Council of State, he took part in its work as master of requests from 1837 to 1848. In May 1842, he took over the parliamentary succession of Bertrand Clauzel in Rethel, as deputy of the Ardennes.

After 1848, he represented the Ardennes at the Constituent Assembly and the Legislative Assembly and took an active part in the discussions and preparatory work of the committees. Member of the majority, he refused to join the politics of the Élysée and protested against the 1851 French coup d'état and returned to private life.

He was elected member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 1866. On February 8, 1871, he was appointed to the National Assembly, the third of seven, by the voters of the Ardennes.

Ternaux is the author of a monumental History of the Terror in eight volumes published between 1862 and 1881.

In April 1850, during the discussion of the budget for public education, he proposed an amendment that reduced the appropriations for high schools and colleges, with the consequence of increasing the school fees for the middle-class children who attended them. He argued that paying for the schooling of the children of the rich with taxes levied on the poor was contrary to equality. The amendment was rejected by a small majority; Frédéric Bastiat wrote an article approving it.

He was the brother of the banker and anthropologist Charles Henri Ternaux, known as Ternaux-Compans and his wife Céline Brame was the owner of several plots of land, including the one that will be donated for the Sacré-Coeur du Sart church.

Mortimer Ternaux died in Beaumont-les-Autels.

Works

• Histoire de la Terreur, 1792-1794 (1862–1881; 8 volumes)

External links

• Works by Mortimer Ternaux at Gallica