In his Treatise of Orders and Plain Dignities, Charles Loyseau set out to harmonise with law his fellow citizens' values and behaviour in the crucial sphere of possession and exercise of public power. This edition sets Loyseau's text in the context of his own political thesis and the intellectual milieu of those who administered early-modern France.

An important and influential treatise on public power which influenced French thinkers from its publication in 1610 until the end of the ancien regime.