PIERRE EDMOND TEISSERENC DE

See also:

• BORT, or BOART

BORT (1814-1892)  , French writer and politician, was born at Chateauroux on the 17th of September 1814, and entered the civil service after the completion of his education at the tcole Polytechnique . He was a railway expert, becoming secretary-general of the Rail-way Commission established in 1842, government commissioner to the authorized railway companies, administrator of the Lyons-Mediterranean railway, and commissioner to examine foreign railways . In 1846 he was returned to the Chamber of Deputies for Herault, but the revolution of 1848 drove him into private life, from which he only emerged after the down-fall of the Empire, when in February 1871 he was returned to the National Assembly . He supported the government of Thiers and was minister of agriculture and commerce in 1872-73 . He sat in the Left Centre, and steadily supported republican principles . He entered the Senate in 1876, and was minister of agriculture in the Dufaure-Ricard cabinet of that year, retaining his portfolio in the Jules Simon ministry which fell on the 16th of May 1877 . In 1878, when he joined the new Dufaure cabinet, he opened the Paris exhibition of agriculture and manufactures, the original suggestion of which had been made by him during his 1876 ministry . In 1879 he was sent as ambassador to Vienna, whence he was next year recalled on the score of health . Two years later he re-entered the Senate, where he did good service to the cause of " Republican Defence " during the Boulangist agitation . He died in Paris on the 29th of July 1892 . His works consist of discussions of railway policy from the technical and economic side .