Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$158.68 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: octavo, vol.I only; whole leather binding of the time, tight, leather much rubbed; inside clean, vey few stains; 556 pages;
Seller: Magnus, Paris, France
Price: US$2750.00 + shipping
Description: Contemporary calf, rebacked expertly with raised bands., An early edition of Hume's Essay., Size : Octavo., Volume : 2 volumes. A very good example, second volume with occasional mild water stains.
Seller: Alexandre Antique Prints, Maps & Books, Toronto, ON, Canada
FERGUSON Adam. Essay on the History. Civil Society. , 1767.
Price: US$14000.00 + shipping
Description: "FERGUSON, Adam. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Edinburgh: A. Millar & T. Caddel in the Strand, London, and A. Kincaid & J. Bell, Edinburgh, 1767. Quarto, contemporary full mottled calf, raised bands, red morocco spine label; pp. (i-iii), iv-vii, (viii), (1), 2-430. $14,000.First edition of Ferguson's authoritative work, drawing on a Machiavellian "understanding of virtue" and positioned "between Montesquieu and Tocqueville" in its profound influence, with Jefferson owning a personal copy and Madison, who purchased his own copy in 1775, naming the Essay, with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, as essential "for the use of the U.S. in Congress assembled." Handsome in contemporary calf.Ferguson and his colleague Adam Smith, known as the "two Adams," were born the same year and stand at the center of the Scottish Enlightenment with David Hume and Francis Hutcheson. This first edition of Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society, considered his magnum opus, "appeared between the publication of Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1757) and Wealth of Nations in 1776" (Weinstein, Two Adams). Ferguson is also positioned by scholarsand history"between Montesquieu and Tocqueville; his Essay stands between Spirit of the Laws and Democracy in America [yet] it was more than an artful transcription of Spirit. For Ferguson had a science of politics which went deeper. In particular, he formulated a theory of civil society which focused exclusively on the intrinsic and potentially fatal flaw of modern commercial society: corruption. Ferguson's theory of politics and society was the precursor of Tocqueville's Democracy. Like Tocqueville, Ferguson saw the potential hazards of commerce: a new and terrible slavery was in the offing where a single tyrant would be replaced by a whole society" (McDowell, Commerce, 537-8). "Admired by Samuel Johnson and Holbach, complimented by Gibbon and Voltaire, and esteemed by Hume and Smith" (ODNB), Ferguson was also credited by Marx "for the theory of alienation and the young Hegel had read and reread the Essay as he was formulating his own theory of civil society" (McDowell, 539). "Civil liberty was the great object of Ferguson's enterprise. And his design was to protect the people and their liberty from themselves" (McDowell, 548). In this and other essential respects Ferguson "differed from Hobbes and Hume, who founded morals in utility, from Adam Smith's Theory of Sympathy, and from the moral sense of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson" (Encyclopedia of Philosophy III, 187). "Ferguson's understanding of virtue was Machiavellian the virtuous man was not the man of quiet contemplation, but the man of high-minded-civic concern A constitution, Ferguson argues, was not merely a body of isolated laws [but] a national schoolmaster from whom citizens take their lessons in civility" (McDowell, 545). Both Ferguson and Founding Father James Madison "realized that beneficial conflict must take place among groups that share some things in common" (Branson, James Madison and the Scottish Enlightenment, 249). In his Essay Ferguson observes: "the wisest laws are opposed or amended, by different hands; and come at last to express that medium of composition which contending parties have forced one another to adopt." Jefferson owned a later edition of the Essay: it was "at the core of his studies of government," along with Locke's Two Treatises, Montesquieu's Spirit and other key writings (Randall, 206). Madison, who purchased his own copy in 1775, entered it, along with Hume's "political essay" and Smith's Wealth of Nations on a 1783 list the Federal Congress requested for "books to be imported for the use of the U.S. in Congress assembled" (Branson, 236-7). "Ferguson's thought was original and distinctive" (Hill, Passionate Society, 1, 21), and in present disputes, where "the concept of 'civil society' figures, Ferguson is often invoked as authority" (Kettler, Civil Society and Politics, 2). "His multi-layered intellectual persona, and his particular blend of Scottish, British and European concerns were thus freshly relevant to political sensibilities on the threshold of the 21st century" and remain even more so today (ODNB). ESTC T76205. Goldsmiths I:10264. Sowerby 2348. Lownees II, 791. CBEL II:955. Palgrave II:53. From the library of the Ducs de Luynes at the Château de Dampierre (bookplate and shelf label).Two leaves (3A3-4) with upper corners turned down (printer's error), not affecting text. Only very mild occasional foxing. Expert repairs to joints and extremities of attractive contemporary calf binding. An excellent copy."
Seller: Bauman Rare Books, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.
Price: US$16196.81 + shipping
Description: First Edition. Two Volumes (complete set). Quarto (24.5 cm x 30cm). Collation complete: Volume I: Title, XV, Errata, 12 unnumbered pages, 639 pages plus "A Table of Coins" to the rear of Volume I / Volume II: Title, 14 unnumbered pages, 646 pages plus "A Table of Coins - shewing the Quantity of Fine Metal contained in them" to the rear of Volume II, followed by 12 unnumbered pages of Index and another Errata-leaf. Recent Hardcover / Stunning half-leather Quarto Volumes in Collector's Condition, tight and square, and beautifully bound by two english masterbinders with marbled-paper-covered-boards, using the original spinelabels of the former 18th century-bindings. Bookplates to pastedowns. While the true first edition of Adam Smith's "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" always seems to be somehow available on the international market, the Magnus Opus of Smith's precursor, Sir James Steuart, is not only extremely scarce, but also very hard to find at all. While we are here describing the very few minor faults in detail because this is an extremely valuable item, it must be stressed that the bindings are mint and the bookblocks of the set are in very good+ or rather in near Fine condition ! This first edition-set is not only wide-margined but also on excellent paper with very minor signs of foxing to the Table of Coins and Index. Some signs of mild foxing and the tiniest of wormhole-damage of 2-3 mm to the inner margins of the content-pages of Volume I. Besides some annotations and markings in erasable pencil, the text is clean and in fantastic condition. Very minor signs of a faded dampstain to very few pages (visible but unimportant). One of the rarest classics of economic history by "the founder of economic science" (Encyclopædia of the Social Sciences). This set belongs in every serious Economics Collector's cabinet, next to every first-edition-set of Adam Smith's work. From the library of Daniel Conner (Connerville / Manch House), with his Exlibris / Bookplate to pastedown. [Important References about Sir James Steuart's landmark publication can be found in these bibliographies and monographs: Goldsmith/Kress - Library of Economic Literature / Henry Higgs - Bibliography of Economics, 1751 - 1775 / John Ramsay McCulloch - A Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical, and Historical, of Commerce and Commercial Navigation / Mark Blaug - Great Economists Before Keynes: An Introduction to the Lives and Works of One Hundred Great Economists of the Past and in Joseph A. Schumpeter's 'History of Economic Analysis'] Sir James Steuart's 1767 Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy is perhaps the first, fully-fledged economics treatise. Although often regarded as part of the Scottish Enlightenment which produced David Hume and Adam Smith, Steuart's economics hark back to the earlier Mercantilist era. More accurately, while on the Continent, Steuart had imbibed the sophisticated Enlightenment Mercantilism that was in the air -- particularly, German Neo-Cameralism -- which combined a legal-statist approach with a "natural" approach to economics. Although a promoter of old fashioned export subsidies and import tariffs, Steuart added several elements that tied this in with a more general theory of economic development. Unlike the old Mercantilists, he recognized Cantillon's "population-subsistence" dynamics. He also introduced the concept of diminishing returns to land. Steuart juggled two interesting theories of price -- a long-run, quasi-Marxian labor theory of value and a short-run "demand-and-supply" theory. Indeed, Steuart was among the first to introduce the term "equilibrium". Thus, Steuart was an important forerunner of both the Classical and Neoclassical schools in many respects. Steuart also provided one of the more able statements of the real bills doctrine of money. Steuart followed the Inquiry up with his 1769 Considerations on the county of Lanark (under pseudonym . "Robert Frame"), where he explains and uses the mechanics of a supply-and-demand mechanism in markets. Adam Smith's (1776) attacks on Mercantilism were mainly directed against Steuart (even though the latter was not mentioned by name). Steuart was translated into French in 1789-90, and used by the revolutionaries to argue for certain reforms. However, Steuart's economics were lauded by Karl Marx and he became something of a darling to the German Historical School. Steuart's 1767 Inquiry was not a best-seller - but it was well-received by critics, and was part of the reason he was finally granted a full pardon on December 23, 1771 (curiously, sixty years earlier, another Scottish outlaw, John Law, had also attempted a "practical" economic treatise in the hopes of earning himself a pardon - albeit Law did not succeed). In 1772, at the request of the British East India Company, Steuart undertook a study on the scarcity of coinage in EIC-owned Bengal. In 1773, Steuart added to his wealth the inheritance of the substantial lands of Goodtrees from a defunct Denham branch of the family, and changed his name to Steuart Denham as a condition. Steuart died on November 26, 1780, from a toe infection and was buried in a family vault at Cambusnethan in Lanarkshire. His fame, though tarnished by Smith, was still great enough for the dedication of a cenotaph memorial tablet to Steuart in Westminster Abbey (as far as I can tell, the only economist there). His collected works were compiled by his son, Lt. James Stewart, in 1805. (Source: HET - The History of Economic Thought - compiled by Gonçalo L. Fonseca) Sprache: english.
Seller: Inanna Rare Books Ltd., Skibbereen, CORK, Ireland