“The republication of the complete works of Laplace rested upon an equally sure guarantee.  Yielding at once to filial affection, to a noble feeling of patriotism, and to the enthusiasm for brilliant discoveries which a course of severe study inspired, General Laplace had long since qualified himself for becoming the editor of the seven volumes which are destined to immortalize his father.

“There are glorious achievements of a character too elevated, of a lustre too splendid, that they should continue to exist as objects of private property.  Upon the State devolves the duty of preserving them from indifference and oblivion:  of continually holding them up to attention, of diffusing a knowledge of them through a thousand channels; in a word, of rendering them subservient to the public interests.

“Doubtless the Minister of Public Instruction was influenced by these considerations, when upon the occasion of a new edition of the works of Laplace having become necessary, he demanded of you to substitute the great French family for the personal family of the illustrious geometer.  We give our full and unreserved adhesion to this proposition.  It springs from a feeling of patriotism which will not be gainsayed by any one in this assembly.”

In fact, the Chamber of Deputies had only to examine and solve this single question:  “Are the works of Laplace of such transcendent, such exceptional merit, that their republication ought to form the subject of deliberation of the great powers of the State?” An opinion prevailed, that it was not enough merely to appeal to public notoriety, but that it was necessary to give an exact analysis of the brilliant discoveries of Laplace in order to exhibit more fully the importance of the resolution about to be adopted.  Who could hereafter propose on any similar occasion that the Chamber should declare itself without discussion, when a desire was felt, previous to voting in favour of a resolution so honourable to the memory of a great man, to fathom, to measure, to examine minutely and from every point of view monuments such as the Mecanique Celeste and the Exposition du Systeme du Monde?  It has appeared to me that the report drawn up in the name of a committee of one of the three great powers of the State might worthily close this series of biographical notices of eminent astronomers.[22]

The Marquis de Laplace, peer of France, one of the forty of the French Academy, member of the Academy of Sciences and of the Bureau des Longitudes, an associate of all the great Academies or Scientific Societies of Europe, was born at Beaumont-en-Auge of parents belonging to the class of small farmers, on the 28th of March, 1749; he died on the 5th of March, 1827.

The first and second volumes of the Mecanique Celeste were published in 1799; the third volume appeared in 1802, the fourth volume in 1805; as regards the fifth volume, Books XI. and XII. were published in 1823, Books XIII.  XIV. and XV. in 1824, and Book XVI. in 1825.  The Theorie des Probabilites was published in 1812.  We shall now present the reader with the history of the principal astronomical discoveries contained hi these immortal works.