Philadelphia: Printed for the Subscribers, by Robert Bell, at the late Union-Library, in Third-Street, 1773.
Price:
$1,250.00
About the item
Second American edition. [4], iv, [1], 6-119, [1], xii, 155, [1] pp. 8vo. Contemporary American calf, rebacked retaining the original lettering piece. Evans 12684; ESTC W12870WH/10/Photo.
Item #378700
The second printing by Robert Bell of this important and influential commentary on Blackstone, published the year after the first edition. Bell first printed these collected works as the fifth volume to the first American edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, published in 1772.
Blackstone's work is considered the definitive pre-Revolutionary source on the Common Law, doing much to define conceptions of personal rights and the relationship between the English citizen and his government. The works collected herein include rejoinders to Blackstone by Joseph Priestley and Philip Furneaux, with Blackstone's responses. They specifically address Blackstone's writings on religious liberty and toleration, and the rights of nonconformists. The philosophical issues addressed in these essays, especially the concepts of personal rights and the obligations of a subject to authority, were obviously of great importance to American colonists in the years just before the outbreak of the Revolution. A scarce and important consideration of personal liberties, published on the eve of the Revolution.
The ‘Appendix to Blackstone’ has six parts: (1) Priestley, Joseph. Remarks on some Paragraphs in the Fourth Volume of Dr. Blackstone’s Commentaries…; (2) Blackstone, William. A Reply to Dr. Priestley’s Remarks…; (3) Priestley, An Answer to Blackstone’s Reply to Remarks…; (4) Furneaux, Philip. Letters to the Honourable Mr. Justice Blackstone, concerning His Exposition of the Act of Toleration…; (5) Appendix Containing Authentic Copies of the Argument of the late Honourable Mr. Justice Foster…; (6) Appendix No. 2. The Speech of…Lord Mansfield…, Feb. 4, 1767.
The first American edition (1772) was the first complete edition. The final page of this volume advertises Bell’s second American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries “in Four Volumes Quarto, at Three Dollars each Volume -- Those Gentlemen who were Subscribers to the First Edition in Octavo, and now choose to possess the Quarto Edition, shall have their Octavo (if not abused) exchanged for the Quarto, on paying the Difference between the Prices.”.
