Recueil des Loix Constitutives des Colonies Angloises, Confédérées sous la Dénomination d’États-Unis de l’Amérique-Septentrionale. Auquel on a joint les actes...du Congrès General, traduit de l’anglois....

[10],370pp. Half title. , En Suisse [i.e. Paris]: 1778. 19th-century blue half morocco and marbled boards.

The earliest collection of the constitutions of the constituent American states published in France, and the predecessor for the more generally known translation by the Duc de la Rochefoucauld of THE CONSTITUTIONS OF THE SEVERAL INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA (Philadelphia, 1781 and Paris, 1783).  This work was compiled by Régnier and dedicated via a letter (printed herein) to Benjamin Franklin, who ordered the publication of the 1783 collection.  Included also is an exceptionally early appearance in book form, in French, of the Declaration of Independence.  An important early gathering. Interestingly, this title appears under two false imprints: the imprint "A Philadelphie" and "En Suisse,"  the latter of which the present copy bears. The practice of using false imprints during pre-Revolutionary France was a common one, and is evidence of the flexibility in the government's relationship with the printing press - often giving the government the safety net of official denial, should any objections be raised in the face of a controversial publication. Though published in Paris, Switzerland, a country popularly conceived of as a bastion of non-Monarchical and therefore liberal, even inclusively representative government, would have provided plausible support for the books' counterfeit origin Howes R111, "aa.".

Item #248399       Price: $2,500.00