First Edition of Tucker's Tract V
Tract V. The Respective Pleas and Arguments of the Mother Country. and of the Colonies, Distinctly Set Forth; And the Impossibility of a compromise of differences, or a mutual concession of rights, plainly demonstrated. With a prefatory epistle to the plenipotentiaries of the late Congress at Philadelphia.
Glocester: Printed by R. Raikes; and sold by T. Cadell, in the Strand, and J. Walter, Char, 1775.
Full Description:
TUCKER, Josiah. Tract V. The Respective Pleas and Arguments of the Mother Country. and of the colonies, distinctly set forth; And the Impossibility of a compromise of differences, or a mutual concession of rights, plainly demonstrated. With a prefatory epistle to the plenipotentiaries of the late Congress at Philadelphia. Glocester: Printed by R. Raikes; and sold by T. Cadell, in the Strand, and J. Walter, Char, 1775.
First edition. Octavo (7 3/4 x 4 7/8 inches; 197 x 124 mm). xvi, [9]-51, [1, publisher's advertisements] pp. Engraved headpieces and initials. Final page has an advertisement for the upcoming "Tract VI" as well as the previously published "Four Tracts."
Disbound pamphlet. Some scotch tape to top and bottom of spine. Some minor toning. Overall a very good copy.
"The Rev. Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, was one of the more prolific pamphleteers of his time, and one of the few whose work still commands attention. He was an economist as well as a theologian, and his economic ideas led him gradually to the conclusion that the colonies were an encumbrance that the mother country could best do without. The conclusion was based solely on British self-interest as he saw it; with the colonists’ arguments about their rights he had no patience. The sovereignty of Parliament was for him unlimited: the Americans were virtually represented in it and hence might be taxed by it.1 He was singularly contemptuous of them, even by the standards of the day." (National Archives). Additionally, "modern scholars credit Tucker with anticipating by 20 years the arguments of Adam Smith espousing free trade and denying the mercantilist contention that colonies were essential to the economic prosperity of Great Britain" (Condon, Americanization of Benjamin Franklin).
The present pamphlet "Tract V" was written on the heels of America's First Continental Congress which issued its Declaration of Rights in October 1774. Tucker "Responding to the decisions of the first continental congress he published The Respective Pleas and Arguments of the Mother Country and her Colonies (1775), in which he argued that any compromise was now impossible and took the opportunity to berate the Americans over their treatment of their slaves and the Native Americans. This work too was republished, together with the other four tracts, in the year of the Declaration of Independence (1776)." (Oxford DNB). In subsequent writings, Tucker was known to have "praised the wisdom of Thomas Paine's Common Sense, concluding that although separation was not a popular idea in Britain, to achieve this voluntarily would be in Britain's long-term economic interest." (ODNB).
This Tract not only argues the benefits of Britain's separation of the colonies, but also questions America's treatment of slaves and natives. "Why are not the poor Negroes, and the poor Indians entitled to the like Rights and Benefits? And how comes it to pass, that these immutable Laws of Nature are become so very mutable, and so very insignificant in respect to them?. . . . What horrid cruelties do you daily practice on the Bodies of the poor Negroes; over whom you can have no Claim, according to your own Principles?" (page v).
ESTC T51502. Sabin, 97358
HBS 69559.
$1,500.
Price: $1,500.00
Item #69559