The Spirit of the Laws
During the Age of Enlightenment, many philosophers wrote pamphlets against slavery and its moral and economical justifications, including Montesquieu in "The Spirit of the Laws" (1748) and Denis Diderot in the "Encyclopédie". In 1788, Jacques Pierre Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of the Blacks ("Société des Amis des Noirs") to work for the abolition of slavery. After the Revolution, on 4 April 1792, France granted free people of colour full citizenship.