In 1783, in consequence of a favourable report by Macquer, Morveau obtained permission to establish a manufactory of carbonate of soda, the first of the kind ever attempted in France. It was during the same year that he published his collection of pleadings at the bar, among which we find his Discours sur la Bonhomie, delivered at the opening of the sessions at Dijon, with which he took leave of his fellow-magistrates, surrendering the insignia of office, as he had determined to quit the profession of the law. On the 25th of April, 1784, Morveau, accompanied by President Virly, ascended from Dijon in a balloon, which he had himself constructed, and repeated the ascent on the 12th of June following, with a view of ascertaining the possibility of directing these aerostatic machines, by an apparatus of his own contrivance. The capacity of the balloon was 10,498,074 French cubic feet. The effect produced by this bold undertaking by two of the most distinguished characters in the town was beyond description. Such ascents were then quite new, and looked upon with a kind of reverential awe. Though Morveau failed in his attempts to direct these aerial vessels, yet his method was ingenious and exceedingly plausible. In 1786 Dr. Maret, secretary to the Dijon Academy, having fallen a victim to an epidemic disease, which he had in vain attempted to arrest, Morveau was appointed perpetual secretary and chancellor of the institution. Soon after this the first half-volume of the chemical part of the Encyclopédie Méthodique made its appearance, and drew the attention of every person interested in the science of chemistry. No chemical treatise had hitherto appeared worthy of being compared to it. The article _Acid_, which occupies a considerable part, is truely admirable; and whether we consider the historical details, the completeness of the accounts, the accuracy of the description of the experiments, or the elegance of the style, constitutes a complete model of what such a work should be. I may, perhaps, be partial, as it was from this book that I imbibed my own first notions in chemistry, but I never perused any book with more delight, and when I compared it with the best chemical books of the time, whether German, French, or English, its superiority became still more striking. In the article _Acier_, Morveau had come to the very same conclusions, with respect to the nature of _steel_, as had been come to by Berthollet, Monge, and Vandermonde, in their celebrated paper on the subject, just published in the Memoirs of the Academy. His own article had been printed, though not published, before the appearance of the Memoir of the Academicians. This induced him to send an explanation to Berthollet, which was speedily published in the Journal de Physique.