French economist and miscellaneous writer, an associate of the Philosophes and a contributor to the Encyclopédie.

Educated by the Jesuits in Lyon and at the Sorbonne, Morellet took holy orders, but his designation of abbé was the chief thing clerical about him. A frequenter of the salon of Mme Geoffrin (of whom he wrote an Éloge), he had a ready and biting wit, and Voltaire called him “L'Abbé Mord-les” (the Abbé Bite-Them). As an economist he expounded the views of Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, baron de l'Aulne). In 1785 he was elected to the Académie Française and preserved its archives during the Terror, which he fearlessly condemned in several pamphlets. His Mélanges de littérature et de philosophie du XVIII^e siècle, containing selections from his previous works, appeared in 1818, and his valuable, elegantly written Mémoires sur le XVIII^e siècle et la Révolution was published in 1821.