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13 BENDA, Julien. La Trahison des clercs. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1927 First edition of the author’s best-known book, copy V of 10 copies on velin pur fil creme lafuma, the rarest of the octavo issues, from a total edition of 3,650 octavo copies, alongside quarto issues. La Trahison des clercs was “undoubtedly one of the major events in political thought between the two wars. The ‘Clerc’ is what Benda conceived the intellectual to be, someone disengaged from the mere contingencies of existence and fighting for ideals which went beyond the demands of a given moment in space and time. In violent and brilliant invective, he attacked the intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for having fallen short of this ideal by becoming the devoted advocates not of ideals, but of groups of existences, material and transient, such as a nation of a social class. The title of Benda’s manifesto became a kind of catch phrase which, by a curious irony of fate, inverted its original sense, and came sometimes to be used as a term of reproach for the intellectuals who shut themselves off from the march of events in an ivory tower. The Trahison des Clercs achieved a world-wide popularity and was translated and reprinted over and over again . . . [It] continues to be read; and its invigorating attach on over-involvement deserves not to be forgotten” ( PMM ). Octavo. Original white wrappers, spine and front cover lettered in black and green, edges uncut. Minor dust soiling and a few chips around the extremities, still an excellent copy. ¶ Hazlitt, The Free Man’s Library , p. 40; Printing and the Mind of Man 419. £750 [112783] 14 BENTHAM, Jeremy. A Fragment on Government. Dublin: Printed for J. Sheppard [& 12 others], 1776
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12 BELLERS, John. An Essay towards the Improvement of Physick. London: J. Sowle, 1714 A national health service in 1714 First edition of John Bellers’s powerful essay promoting a healthcare service, far in advance of his own time. “So far as can be ascertained, John Bellers’s plan was the first detailed proposal that had yet been conceived for an all-embracing National Health Service. Britain, he claimed, could not afford to ignore the moral or the economic realities of his plan: ‘Good health was equal to Riches.’ His ‘proposals’ as outlined have, it may be considered, become outdated, but his moral considerations remain pertinent. In this, as in other essays, we see such considerations buttressed by practical economic reasoning. We see, too, his critical, even stringent, observations on uncontrolled self-interest” (Clarke). Much admired by Robert Owen and Karl Marx, who refers to Bellers at least four times in Das Kapital and describes him as a “veritable phenomenon in the history of political economy”, the Quaker John Bellers was a fellow of the Royal Society and a close friend of Hans Sloane, with whom he undoubtedly discussed his proposals. He authored a number of philanthropic works, beginning in 1695 with his Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry of All Usefull Trades and Husbandry . Quarto (198 × 158 mm). Recent quarter morocco, spine lettered in gilt, marbled sides. Small rust hole to H4 affecting one letter, upper outer corner of title and final two leaves restored; a crisp, clean copy. ¶ Goldsmiths’ 5169; Hanson 2096; Kress 2896; not in Mattioli or Sraffa. £4,750 [151113]
WEALTH AND WELFARE
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