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180 SIDNEY, Algernon. Discourses concerning Government . . . The Second Edition carefully corrected . . . London: printed by J. Darby, 1704 ONE OF “THE INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE” – JEFFERSON Second edition. Written between 1681 and 1683 and originally circulated as a manuscript, the work was first published in 1698. While still unpublished, the Discourses was used against Sidney in his trial and subsequent execution in 1683 for his complicity in the Rye House Plot, the indictment citing sentences saying that the king is subject to law, is responsible to the people, and may be deposed, as a “false, seditious, and traitorous libel” (Sabine, 512). “The Discourses places Sidney alongside Milton as the master of republican eloquence. It is the power of its prose, as much as any aspect of its content, which helps to account for the work’s exceptional subsequent impact in Britain, continental Europe, and America . . . For subsequent influence in Enlightenment Britain, America, the United Provinces, Germany, and France, he had no seventeenth-century rival except John Locke” ( ODNB ). Provenance: with the bookplate to front pastedown of William Markham (1719–1807), at his Becca Lodge estate in Yorkshire; Markham served as Headmaster of Westminster 1753–65, Dean of Christ Church in Oxford 1767–76, and Archbishop of York
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181 SMITH, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The Second Edition. London: for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1778 THE basis OF MODERN ECONOMICS Second edition of this classic of economic thought, an attractive copy in contemporary calf, printed in 500 copies and the only edition to be published in quarto format after the first edition of 1776.
from 1777 until his death. Loosely inserted is an unsigned manuscript note “To Mr Markham. Keep this Book for my sake & as often as you look into it, think of yr old Whig friends”. Folio (314 × 199 mm). Contemporary panelled calf, later red morocco label. Portrait frontispiece. Joints and extremities expertly restored, bottom fore corner of two front free endpapers restored a little crudely, minor wax mark to pp. 266/7, contents otherwise crisp and clean. A very good copy. ¶ ESTC T113295. £3,000 [149251]
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SPRING 2022
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