As a lawyer his greatest public efforts were his lectures (1799) at Lincoln's Inn on the law of nature and nations, of which the introductory discourse was published, and his eloquent defence (1803) of Jean Gabriel Peltier, a French refugee, tried at the instance of the French government for a libel against the first consul.
When a current is passed through a solid alloy, a series of Peltier effects, proportional to the current, are set up between the particles of the different metals, and these create an opposing electromotive force which is indistinguishable experimentally from a resistance.
When the Revolution developed the importance of the press, Rivarol at once took up arms on the Royalist side, and wrote in the Journal politique of Antoine Sabatier de Castres (1742-1817) and the Actes des Apdtres of Jean Gabriel Peltier (1770-1825).
Peltier (1785-1845) in 1814 discovered that a current passed across the junction of two metals either generated or absorbed heat.
Peltier (1834) that heat is absorbed at the junction of two metals by passing a current through it in the same direction as the current produced by heating it, was recognized by Joule as affording a clue to the source of the energy of the current by the application of the principles of thermodynamics.