Jean-Baptiste Tests

Jean-Baptiste Teste is a lawyer and French politician born with Bagnols-sur-Cèze (Gard) the October 20th 1780 and died in Chaillot (today Paris) the April 20th 1852.

Biography

Wire of Antoine Teste, lawyer at the Parliament of Provence, and of Elisabeth Boyer, Jean-Baptiste Teste made his studies at the Joséphites of Lyon and was distinguished very early, according to the formula of Joseph Marie Portalis, by the “demosthenic forms ” of his oratorical delivery (in other words by its difficulties of elocution).

A particularly famous lawyer

He was accepted lawyer in Paris and was registered initially with the bar of the capital where he pled some time successfully, before returning to settle with Nimes where he acquired a great reputation.

During the Hundred Days, Napoleon I {{er}} named it directing police force in Lyon. He was elected representing Gard with the Room of the Hundred Days the May 7th 1815 (50 votes out of 73 voters) but did not sit because of its administrative offices.

Proscribed with the Second Restoration, it took refuge with Liege where it followed its lawyer occupation. But, being made the defender of a newspaper, Mercury supervising , which had attacked the Russia and the Austria, it was expelled and was authorized to return only at the end of twenty-two months. In the interval, it tried, but without success, to fix itself at Paris, where one refused the inscription with the bar to him. There thus remained lawyer in Liege until in 1830, and constituted beautiful customers.

The king Guillaume I {{er}} of the Netherlands charged it with the management of his domanial businesses. He also pled for the house of Orleans at the time of a lawsuit with the Rohan about the Duché of Bubble, joined together with the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1814. It is on this occasion that it became acquainted with André Dupin ( elder Dupin ), lawyer of the house of Orleans.

It could return to Paris after the Révolution of July and was registered there with the bar, where it occupied soon one of the first places and was named lawyer of the field and the Treasury.

A political career under the monarchy of July

At the time of the general elections of the July 5th 1831, Jean-Baptiste Teste was elected appointed by the 1st electoral college of the Gard (Uzès) (217 votes out of 375 voters and 488 registered voters against 145 with Mr. Madier de Montjau). It sat in the rows of the Third Liberal party of his friend elder Dupin, where it was announced by his heat to defend the new mode. It took part more particularly, always with understanding and skill, with the debates on the legislation, the trade and public works.

He was re-elected the June 21st 1834 (227 votes out of 349 voters and 464 registered voters against 111 with Mr. de Dreux-Brézé) and was named Minister the Commercial and of Public works, while in parallel taking over temporarily the duties of the ministry for the State education and the Worships, in transitory the ministry Maret (10 - November 18th 1834).

He was then elected vice-president of the House of Commons and obtained his re-election the December 13rd 1834 (243 votes out of 253 voters and 591 registered voters). He voted then with the majority but entered the coalition which, in 1839, made fall the first ministry Molé. He was re-elected appointed the March 2nd 1839 (256 votes out of 418 voters) and was named Minister for Justice and the Worships in the second ministry Soult (May 12th 1839 March 1st 1840). He was re-elected appointed the June 22nd 1839 (280 votes out of 289 voters). During its passage to the ministry, it named a charged commission to study the means of removing the venality of the ministerial offices.

The marshal Soult, which appreciated it, then made it name public Minister for Labor in its third ministry the October 29th 1840. It made vote the great law of 1841 on the expropriation due to public utility, the law of 1842 on the railroads and the law of 1843 on the Industrial property.

The December 16th 1843, Guizot drew aside it from the ministry but made him give sumptuous compensations. It was made Pair France and was named with the Court of appeal. A family member royal intervened even in his favor so that the president of the civil court resigned so that one could name it in his place. Large officer of the Legion of honor in 1846, it reached then with the ridge of the honors.

A reputation sullied by the scandal Tests-Cubières

In 1847, burst the scandal Tests-Cubières. The general Despans-Cubières, transitory Minister for the War in 1839 and 1840, pressed by needs for money, launched out in various speculations, in particular a business of mining. In 1843, to obtain the renewal of the concession of a salt mine with Gouhenans (Saône-et-Loire), it made pour by its associates a bribe of 94.000 francs to the public Minister for Labor, Teste.

The business is revealed in May 1847 at the time of a lawsuit between the associates of the mining company in front of the civil court of the Seine. The director of the company of the salt mines of Gouhenans, certain Parmentier, product various parts of correspondence emanating from the Despans-Cubières general which evoke the bribe.

The business had an enormous publicity and the scandal was resounding. The king decided to evoke the lawsuit in front of the Room of the pars. The July 8th 1847, Tests, Despans-Cubières, Parmentier and certain Pellapra, former general receiver who had been used as intermediary appeared before the high jurisdiction under the inculpation of corruption. It is said that Louis-Philippe I {{er}} reproached its chancellor, the duke Pasquier, to have put Teste in preventive prison, while saying to him: “How! you did not have enough of one of my ministers! It was necessary a second of it for you! Thus I spent seventeen years to raise the capacity in France; in one day, in one hour, you let it fall down. ”

Test, which had been dislocated of all its functions the lawsuit day before, started with all to deny before crumbling, confused by the evidence produced before the court by Mrs. Pellapra, woman forsaken of the general receiver, and by the testimony of the stockbroker which had converted the funds into bills Treasury. It tried to commit suicide the July 12th while drawing with the temple and in the area out of the heart two blows from a gun which his/her son had brought to him, but who wounded it only slightly. The following day, he refused to present himself to the audience, “the produced parts, wrote he with the chancellor, not leaving more place to contradiction”. The July 17th, the Room of the pars condemned it to three years of imprisonment, the restitution of the 94.000 francs and an of the same fine going up, to pour in the cases of the Old people's home of Paris. He was imprisoned with the Prison of Luxembourg, which he had made build, and there remained until the August 13rd 1849. The president Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte then authorized it to purge the remainder of his sorrow in a private hospital to Chaillot and a handing-over of 50.000 francs granted to him on the fine to which he had been condemned. It left the private hospital in July 1850 and died less than two years later.

References

Sources

Guy Antonetti, Louis-Philippe , Paris, Beech, 1994
Adolphe Robert and Gaston Cougny, Dictionary of the French Members of Parliament , Paris, Dourloton, 1889

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