DEFOE, Daniel:. The Re-Representation: or, A Modest Search after the Great Plunderers of the Nation: Being a Brief Enquiry into Two weighty Particulars, necessary at this Time to be known. I. Who they are that have plundered the Nation. II. Why that are not detected. and punished London, Printed in the Year First edition, 1711.

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Condition: Very Good

Description: 8vo., 88pp., the issue with known. I. (rather than known, viz. I. ) on the title-page, and with against and publick spelled correctly on pages 11 and 25, bound in late twentieth century paper wrappers. A VG clean copy. (Rothschild, 749; Kress 2746; Attributed to Defoe by Higgs; Not in Wright). An attack on the rising problem of fraud within trade, with some advice on how to counteract it. It was particularly aimed at John Smith, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other ministers. The preamble to the patent creating Harley a peer had recited his public services and praised him for preventing the further plundering of the Nation . Who were the plunderers? The former Whig ministry, according to Tory propagandists, who murmured charges of bribery, misappropriation, fraudulent victualling, over-mustering, and expenditure beyond the Estimates. But innocent Men , writes the author, may be pointed at for Politick Designs, to blacken their Reputation [and to] confirm Faction . the Guilt charged upon them in the publick Discourse of the Town, cannot be proved . Let the new ministry look to its own management of state affairs. The pamphlet ends with a fable of the Commonwealth of the Brutes: There was . a Season when . the Horses were accused to the Lyon of having mismanaged and misbehaved in the publick Trusts . Swift apparently had some hand in writing the fulsome Latin preamble to Harley s patent, with its remark about plundering the nation; and he has also been credited with translating the preamble into English (Journal to Stella, I, 265n., and DNB).

Seller: Geoffrey Jackson, Royal Wootton Bassett, WILTS, United Kingdom